


Wilderness

by lonely_is_so_lonely_alone



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Fits with Canon, The Trixie&Tim friendship you never knew you needed, Tim pov, Trixie-Centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone/pseuds/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone
Summary: ‘Nurse Franklin?’ he says, one hand on the door. She can’t, he thinks, she can’t be here to stay.‘It’s Trixie, please,’ she says, and she steps forward into the doorway. ‘I’m going to be looking after you.’- when the rest of his family go on holiday, Tim finds himself being looked after by one of Poplar’s finest midwives - but Trixie’s hiding secrets and Tim wants to get to the bottom of it.
Relationships: Bernadette | Shelagh Turner/Patrick Turner, Christopher Dockerill/Trixie Franklin, Delia Busby/Patsy Mount, Trixie Franklin & Timothy Turner
Comments: 38
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first Call the Midwife fanfic and I’m pretty nervous to be posting.
> 
> I’d love some feedback - anything really! I’ve written the first three chapters already and have the whole things planned out. I’m looking forward to sharing it! 
> 
> If you’ve got any questions or thoughts, just pop them in a comment and I’ll try my hardest to reply!
> 
> I aim to update 1-2 times a week if all goes well :)

She comes to the house on the Friday. Tim’s alone. His parents are gone, trailing his siblings, stuffed in the back of the car. They’re on summer holiday - he’s not. He stayed behind. 

And then there she is, standing by the front door, blown by the wind. He blinks. He thinks he must be imagining her. The sun is over her shoulder, low and bright, hot even for July. 

He was alone - this was his freedom, his escape - the summer before his eighteenth to figure out the world. 

‘Timothy?’ she says. His name sounds unfamiliar when she says it, as she’s not quite sure it’s the right name. He notices the pink suitcase at her feet, is captivated by it. He looks her up and down, as if she’s on a revolving platform, a ballerina in a music box. 

‘Nurse Franklin?’ he says, one hand on the door. She can’t, he thinks, she can’t be here to stay. 

‘It’s Trixie, please,’ she says, and she steps forward into the doorway. ‘I’m going to be looking after you.’ 

So a nurse it is. One nurse, a pink suitcase and a silence that she carries and he doesn’t know where to put. 

She’s here to stay - the whole three weeks his family are away. Trixie shuffles into the house and it occurs to him, suddenly, vividly, that she’s never been here before. Tim tides away cups, scoops up magazines. She follows in his wake. 

Trixie Franklin, of all people. Effortlessly elegant, always occupied by makeup and mirrors. If Nonatus sent a babysitter, Tim would’ve expected Nurse Crane; she was the kind of fierce that would keep a kid in order. 

He wasn’t expecting anyone - it’s only been a couple of hours since his mum and dad packed up and said their goodbyes. Would one afternoon have been too much? 

It’s three o’clock now, he spies the time over the mantlepiece. He’s seventeen, for God’s sake. He’s not a child anymore. He doesn’t need someone to watch him. 

Trixie’s sitting by the door, waiting. He sits with her. There’s a question sitting on the settee between them. He wants to know why, if they’re so keen to keep an eye on him, the nurses can’t just pop in every so often, check he’s not burnt the house down or lost himself to his record player. 

But there’s something in Trixie’s eyes when he looks at her: a far off look. It says to him, too much. It says, danger, don’t ask. 

He has only seen that look once before, when his mother was sick and his father fraught, when they would sit in the dark quiet of the old house and put the radio on. 

He usually sees Trixie laughing, at a distance. Now she’s beside him, Tim’s worried she’s always had that look. 

The Turner family minus Tim are probably barreling down the M4 right now, escaping London with more teddy bears than people. They’re going to a hotel in Bristol, Dad said they’d have a blast. Tim had wanted a quiet summer. A summer to think, not be pulled and tugged by his siblings, however good intentioned they were. 

‘I think a break’s a good thing for a boy,’ Trixie says, balancing a tea cup on her knee. 

‘What about for a girl?’ he asks. He’s looking right at her. She’s the girl, of course. 

He shows her the spare bedroom, the one that’s got dust on the bedclothes and was only ever used by Magda before she hightailed it out of London. 

Trixie tests out the mattress and Tim leans on the doorframe with his arms folded. The suitcase lies abandoned in the hall downstairs. She brushes the palms of her hands against the pillows, the folded blankets. 

He seems out of place watching her, even though this is his house, like he has to tiptoe. He’s scared of distracting her when it’s him who should be thinking things over, who should be worried about his mind wandering off. His exams are over, but there are still things to sort, to fix, to decide. That’s what he’d wanted - time. And now he’s got time and he’s got a mystery: she’s sitting on the bed before him. 

‘How is school?’ Trixie asks. They’re sitting in the kitchen, an undrunk pot of tea in front of them. They keep doing that, making tea and leaving the cups. It’s a way to keep busy, a distraction tactic they keep forgetting. 

‘Far away,’ he says, shrugging. She smiles for a moment and pours tea that neither will drink. 

‘Was it terrible?’ 

‘Not terrible,’ he says, quickly. ‘Just different.’ Tim shakes head. He enjoyed it - he did. It was exciting and fun and wonderful, at the start. And then, he was somewhere new and he didn’t know anybody and they didn’t know him. They’d all been there since they were eleven, and there he was, a lanky sixteen year old who could play the piano and quote the Lancet. He couldn’t even play cricket right. 

‘Lonely?’ Trixie says, handing him a cup. He takes it and leans back. 

‘No - not at all.’ His teacup clatters against the table cloth. 

‘Why did they send you?’ 

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘But-’

Tim pushes his chair away from the table and it makes such a horrible sound. He stands, suspended for a moment as if he, too, is surprised by his actions. Trixie is staring. He can feel his face heating up and he looks away, at the floor. 

Trixie taps her feet against the hardwood. She doesn’t say anything. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He wants to say, I don’t know what came over me, but he’s too embarrassed. He scuffs his feet against the chair leg. 

‘We’ll get used to each other,’ Trixie says, full of exuberance, full light and laughter. She’s even smiling. He doesn’t know how she does it. He really doesn’t. 

He makes a cake, or tries to. Trixie protests, she shakes her head, says, ‘No, you don’t need to do anything,’ but he doesn’t listen to her. In the end, she relents, huffs her shoulders dramatically and spins on her heels. 

She hands him the ingredients: the flour from the cupboard near the sink that he spills everywhere the moment it’s in his arms, then the eggs from the refrigerator, the sugar hidden under the sink because Teddy had a habit of grabbing handfuls when no one was looking. 

They settle into an easy kind of truce. There are still questions - things he doesn’t understand but knows he’s not supposed to. Things like: why his mum and dad didn’t tell him Trixie was coming, like why there was no one else from Nonnatus on the doorstep. Things like the suitcase, pink and bright, that betrays something he can’t quite quantify. 

Tim attacks the eggs with a whisk. 

‘Are you leaving nursing?’ he asks, suddenly, violently, like a crack of thunder. His voice surprises him. Trixie, stops in her tracks, a butter dish held in her outstretched hands. He looks deep into the eggs, like maybe he asked them and not her. 

‘No,’ she says, quickly and quietly. There’s a certainty in her voice that comforts him. 

‘Poplar?’ 

‘Not if I have my way.’

He bites his tongue, hesitates. Trixie rests the butter down on the side

‘Tim?’ she says, insistently, ‘Tim, the eggs!’ 

She leaps across the kitchen at him, and he falls backwards, the bowl sinking to his chest. Trixie’s right to be worried about the fate of the eggs. He wasn’t paying attention and now they’re splattered all over the side, over mum’s prized table cloth. She was right. Tim really shouldn’t have stretched himself like this. 

They crouch by the oven when they’re done. The cake’s not rising, but the egg’s cleared off the side and the kitchen no longer looks like a bomb site. That’s a victory in his eyes. 

‘I’ve never made a cake before,’ Trixie says, beside him. He looks over at her. She’s staring at the oven with a kind of reverence that reminds him of the nuns when they pray. 

‘Me either,’ he says. Finally, he's smiling. Trixie bumps against him lightly. 

‘I would’ve never guessed that.’  
She’s laughing. Tim likes it when she laughs. She looks more like he remembers then. 

They eat the cake, even though it’s as flat as a pancake. Trixie throws cream at it in an attempt to make it seem more attractive, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. 

‘It’ll be just divine,’ she says, but she’s laughing. And he’s laughing too. It doesn’t seem to matter how the cake actually is anymore. 

Tim puts the record player on, plays something that Trixie pulled from the shelf - Ray Charles, something with swing and sway, jazz. They pour more tea to have with the cake and this time they drink it - they need to, given that, as it cooled, the cake’s become as hard as a rock. But they try it anyway, forcing it down and laughing at how terrible the attempt has gone. 

‘Divine,’ he says, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ Trixie says, nodding resolutely, 

‘Exactly that.’ 

After, Trixie goes upstairs. She takes the suitcase. She’s going to unpack. Tim stays in the kitchen with Ray Charles for company. He can hear her creaking the floorboards, back and forth from the bed to the chest of drawers by the window.  
She walks more softly than his dad, than mum when she’s chasing an errant sibling. 

Trixie walks soft like a cat, like she’s scared something’s going to jump out and scare her. 

Tim listens to her and to the record, overlapping. He’s working through what he wants to know, what he should ask. A feeling is dawning upon him: that this isn’t about keeping him in check, but about Trixie and her silence. 

People don’t just come to stay, out of the blue, if everything’s going well. Even if there’s a seventeen year old in the house who can’t make a cake. People just don’t. 

The record ends. He puts on another. He eats a sandwich. Trixie is still upstairs and it’s almost possible to forget she’s there at all. Tim lays out his books on the coffee table in the living room - the school textbooks, the reports, the letters about his results. 

He was going to burn them, but it seems impossible now there’s someone else in the house. 

Trixie billows down the stairs, later, socks and shoes off, caught by something. She stands on the last step, seems surprised to find he’s still here. She crosses her arms, uncrosses them. 

‘Do you have a spare toothbrush?’ she says, revealing the source of her discomfort. ‘I seem to have misplaced mine.’ She pulls at her shirtsleeves. 

Tim jumps up. The record has run to an end, now. 

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘We’re on the telephone line, Trixie. You can just call Nonnantus, get someone to bring it over.’ 

He paces towards the telephone, as if to showcase it - to say, look how marvelous! A telephone in a house. 

But Trixie’s off the step, feet delicate and forceful against the floor. She reaches him at the telephone and puts a hand out to stop him. He’s of one mind just to reach over, but her face is like a gathering dark cloud. 

‘No telephone,’ she says, cooly. ‘Do not go phoning Nonnatus.’ 

‘Why?’ he asks, stupidly. 

‘Because I said. That should be enough, young man.’ 

He’s made her angry, all this talk about the telephone. It’s as if the thought of it scares her. Tim wonders what awaits her on the other end at the line. Surely she’s not terrified by the words, ‘Nonnatus House, midwife speaking,’? Not after all this time. 

He says, ‘There are spare toothbrushes under the sink in the bathroom,’ as they climb up the stairs together. The phone fiasco has made them both tired. It’s late. The cake making took most of the afternoon and the unpacking the rest. 

She pulls the curtains before they go, careful and kind. He walks behind her and they wait for a moment in the corridor, as if they’re unsure of going their separate ways. 

‘Well, goodnight Timothy,’ she says, nodding her head. She steps backwards, opens the bathroom door, and disappears. For a moment, Tim could’ve sworn she was a ghost, so sudden is her exit. No, not a ghost. A fairy. Trixie has that kind of feel about her. 

When he turns around, he notices a letter placed on the top of the hall dresser. It’s caught in the moonlight, swept up by the beams. Tim steps towards it. It’s already stamped, written, sealed: Trixie’s whimsical scrawl on the front. She must’ve put it there and forgotten it when she couldn’t find her toothbrush. 

He presses his finger over the name. 

Tom Herewood. 

Tim leaves the letter alone. Maybe that’s it, he thinks. One name, one letter. Maybe that’s what all this fuss is about.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks to everyone who has read chapter one and stuck with it.
> 
> Now’s everything settled in, a few more of the characters we all know and love will start putting in an appearance! 
> 
> This time, the Brick herself, Phyllis Crane!

Tim doesn’t sleep well. Tossing and turning, listening to the sound of the pipes beating through the walls. He keeps an ear out for Trixie, who creaks the floorboards in a pacing pattern. He soon realises it’s not just him who can’t sleep. 

The house is too hot but every window is open, curtains wafting in the wind, midnight light spilling over the window sills. Tim traces shapes in the darkness; the things of his childhood, certificates piled up on the counter top, teddy bears from long ago. They seem a part of him he has tried to forget recently, a part he never could quite get rid of. These are the things he has realised he never wants to leave. 

Eventually, he falls into a fitful, dreamless sleep. He wakes to the sound of someone in the hallway, but it’s not Angela and May, rushing to their dolls, or Teddy ambling, teetering at the top of the staircase. It’s not even dad, barreling out on a house call. 

It’s Trixie, with confidence and purpose, striding to her escape. He half expects the suitcase to be back by the door, an excuse ready to be made. One night, getting her thoughts together, and then a triumphant return to Nonnatus. 

But when, still clad in his pyjamas, Tim skips down the corridor, he catches Trixie completely unaware. He stops, suddenly, and almost scampers back up. He’s only a step or two down the stairs, bare feet making no sound against the wood, hands pressed silently on the banister. And there’s Trixie, facing away, bathed in the bright morning light. 

She’s smoking at the patio doors, one arm folded, the other resting, poised. She seems somewhat different, not in her usual nurse’s uniform, with the jaunty hat and the well placed, long perfected, smile. 

Tim hangs on the stairs for a moment, watching, listening to the morning birds sing with the sunrise. He’s worried to invade the quiet, the silence that stands beside Trixie like an old, unwelcome friend. One that Tim recognises, and wishes he didn’t. He doesn’t understand it with Trixie, but he doesn’t really know her, not even after all of this time. 

The letter was gone when he woke up. He wonders if she’s already been to the post box, slipped the letter into its teeth and wished it well. Or maybe she has hidden it, having realised her carelessness to leave it on show in the first place.

Tom, the curate, who’s been gone now for years. Tim doesn’t know the details, just the news of a broken engagement long ago and Barbara, he knows her story too well. Writing Tom a letter isn’t automatically a betrayal, a transgression, but something in Trixie’s demeanor tells him to be cautious on the subject. 

He coughs, taps his feet against the stairs. 

‘Morning,’ he says. She turns around like a whirlwind. Gone is the silence, the sadness that he felt on her. Trixie lights up. It’s an old trick, he thinks. 

‘Oh, I didn’t see you there,’ she says. She flashes him a smile. ‘Nice you to join me.’  
Tim looks at her awkwardly, one hand still on the banister. He shuffles about, down another step. Trixie stays in her safety, but the patio doors. 

‘Pancakes?’ she says, light and free. ‘After you’ve presented yourself a little better, of course.’

He nods, and Trixie snaps to business, once again on the hunt for eggs and flour. Tim waits a moment more, caught between staying and going. And then he realises it, when Trixie turns to look at him with the mixing bowl grasped in her hands. She’s not wearing makeup. Not at all. He’s never seen her like that before. 

Tim tells her about the Cubs over the pancakes. 

‘They’ve got their summer show in a month,’ he says, reaching for the jam jar. ‘They’re practicing this afternoon at the community centre .’ 

‘And you’re accompanying?’ she asks. ‘On the piano?’ 

They’re hovering around the kitchen table, unable to make the final commitment and sit. Trixie is brandishing the frying pan like a weapon, looking over her shoulder at him. 

He nods and Trixie plunges the frying pan into the sink. 

‘Do you want to?’ she asks, without looking round. 

‘I have to. I always have.’ 

‘But, sweetie, do you want to?’ 

Tim stuffs a rolled up pancake into his mouth to avoid answering the question. Trixie, thankfully, gets the message. She turns her attention to the frying pan with gusto, sleeves pushed up to avoid the suds. 

‘Do you have plans for today?’ he asks, pushing the jam jar back into the centre of the table. 

‘No - nothing especially,’ she says, in a far off kind of way. 'And anyway,’ she adds, quickly, ‘I think I rather need the rest.’

The rest. There’s something in the way she says it. Like it’s been a long time coming. Trixie’s always on the go, ever since he’s known her - rushing about, doing something, anything, even if that’s just touching up her lipstick. It seems a different Trixie has touched down on his front doorstep, a version he has never seen before. 

‘Now go on,’ she says, ‘shoo. I’ve got to clear up this mess.’ Tim goes to pick up the jam, to sweep away the crumbs and grab the plate, but Trixie’s still looking at him. ‘Surely,’ she says, hands on hips, wooden spoon drowning in the sink, ‘there’s something a teenage boy like you should be doing on a lovely summer's day like this.’

‘But I thought I’d-’

‘I don’t need help, sweetie.’ 

He backs away, admitting defeat. Trixie, even this different, subdued version, isn’t someone to argue with. 

He heads out to Cubs at three o’clock. Trixie is reading a magazine in the living room and he manages to slip out without her noticing. 

At the community center he’s greeted by Nurse Crane, who’s exactly as he remembers. She’s not been swapped out like Trixie. 

The Cubs filter in with great bursts of energy. They’re young, mischievous and unruly, which is not exactly like he was at their age. Nurse Crane marshalls them like they’re a group of tiny air cadets, stern and certain, with a voice that would strike fear into any small boy's heart. 

They’re putting on a summer showcase - a display of firemaking skills and tent building, backed up by some badly sung songs and laboured dance routines. But Nurse Crane is set. This is what they’re doing, even if half the boys won’t, or can’t, stay on track. Even if Tim has to play the introductory cord ten times in a row because Jimmy P keeps forgetting his lines. 

It’s like torture, if that torture was the A cord, again and again. He thinks he’ll dream about it tonight, the madness of the voices all calling out over one another, the high pitched scream of Nurse Crane’s whistle. A whistle that, Tim's sure, has averted at least six accidents in one half an hour meeting. 

‘Could I have a word, Master Turner?’ Nurse Crane asks as the children are leaving. Tim’s busy collecting the music scores up and shoving them into his bag, but he looks up as she speaks.

Nurse Crane approaches the piano with some hesitance, but keeps coming when Tim nods. ‘You played magnificently today,’ she says, tapping the wood and taking her glasses off. He watches her for a moment, pretty sure that this isn’t all she wants to say. 

Before, when Tim was a Cub, Chummy would bribe him with fizzy lollies to play, but he doubts that Nurse Crane’s got any stashed away. She doesn’t seem the sort. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, swinging his bag over his head. It rests on his shoulders. He’s about to stand up and make his escape when Nurse Crane reaches out. She rests one hand on his shoulder. 

‘I’ve heard you’ve a house guest,’ she says, and she looks him right in the eye. Of course. This is about Trixie. Not lollies. Right. 

‘I didn’t have much say on the matter.’ 

‘Are there problems?’ Nurse Crane asks, and there’s such tender concern in her voice that Tim sits right back down. Trixie’s felt like some dream, a fairy floated in that he’s only half understood - she hasn’t seemed real since the moment she showed up. And now here’s Nurse Crane, who’s so solidly here that it seems infinitely more understandable. 

‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ he says, and he forces a smile. Tim folds down the piano cover and turns to look at her. ‘It’s just,’ he starts, but he’s not sure at all how to finish. 

‘I dare say you don’t understand it,’ Nurse Crane says, as he flounders for some kind of explanation. As he tries to think of what to say, she reaches into her bag and produces a striped sweet bag and offers it to him.

‘Barley sugar?’ she says. He laughs. He takes the barley sugar with glee. 

Nurse Crane offers to drive him back to the house. He tries to refuse, assures her that he has plenty of spare change for the bus, but she won’t accept it. So into her car he clambers, windows rolled down, engine puff and huffing. 

They putter down the Commercial Road, and swing round onto the estate. Tim half expects to see his dad’s car zooming round the corner, holiday cancelled, house calls to attend to. But he knows mum wouldn’t let that happen. Not this time.

From across the car, Nurse Crane says, 

‘Timothy,’ softly, but she doesn’t get much further. Tim cuts across her, for fear that he’ll lack courage in a moment. 

‘Is Trixie in trouble?’ he asks, looking over at Nurse Crane, hunched over the steering wheel. She takes her eyes off the road for a second and meets his eye. 

‘Depends what you mean by trouble. Sister Julienne-’

‘Does everyone know?’ he interrupts. Nurse Crane shakes her head. They’re on the right street now, nearly outside. 

‘Nobody tells me anything.’ 

‘Some things aren’t ours to tell, lad,’ she says, sharply, as the car comes to a juddering stop. They sit in the car for a moment, Nurse Crane’s hands still clasped on the steering wheel and Tim’s folded in his lap. Trixie’s fate hovers around them, unspoken. He’s not sure he wants to know anymore, not with the solemness of the way Nurse Crane is talking. 

‘Would you mind if I popped in?’ she asks. 

‘Just to make sure you and Trixie have everything ship-shape?’

He wants to say, it’s been about twenty four hours, come on - what could’ve gone wrong? But then he remembers the way Nurse Crane said the word ‘trouble’ and he gives in. It’s not so much about him anymore. 

‘Of course.’ 

Inside, the house is quiet. Nurse Crane bustles around like a mother hen, checking and double checking. He tells her which bedroom is Trixie’s and watches her disappear up the stairs. 

Tim finds Vogue on the coffee table, the one mark of Trixie’s ever growing presence. He can hear footsteps on the landing, and then in the bedroom. He turns the television on, to drown them out. 

The sleepless night is catching up with him. He’s been having problems with that recently, and Trixie’s arrival has done nothing to help. Sleep seems an enemy of them both, a dark figure that stalks the halls and keeps them up. It’s the nightmares with him, ones like he hasn’t had since he was young, since his mother was still alive. 

He wonders if it’s the same with Trixie. He wonders if, unlike himself, she knows what she’s afraid of. 

Nurse Crane marches down the stairs. Tim is halfway to falling asleep, the titles of Doctor Who playing over him, but her footsteps coupled with the loud whirring of the TARDIS bring him back to life.  
She sits next to him on the settee. He blinks, but his eyes are still blurry with half sleep. 

‘Trixie’s just having a lie down,’ she says, authoritatively, like you'd be stupid to think anything else. ‘So, it seems, were you.’ 

He puts his hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry.’ 

‘Oh don’t you, worry young man,’ Nurse Crane says. ‘Now how about fish and chips for dinner?’ 

Tim laughs. It seems Nurse Phyllis Crane has come to save them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Phyllis ropes Tim and Trixie into helping out at Nonnatus, while a revelation is made about why Trixie is staying at the Turners House.
> 
> Any comments would make my day :) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks to everyone who’s read so far 😃

It was Phyllis who asked them to come. Phyllis, armed with the salt shaker, making it sound like something that had only just crossed her mind. 

‘It’s just the things from donation,’ she said. ‘It’d take an hour at most.’ 

So at ten am, Tim and Trixie start on their journey to Nonnatus House. Both have slept better the night before, starting to come to terms with the sudden arrangement that has been thrust on them both. There hasn’t even been a nightmare on his part. 

‘Please don’t make a fuss,’ Trixie says at the bus stop. It’s ten minutes until the 45’s due and it’s only the two of them waiting for it. ‘Please, Timothy. Even if Phyllis does.’ 

He isn’t completely sure what she means, so he scuffs his shoes against the concrete. She must be talking about his questions. He tries not to ask them, not to her, and she wasn’t there when he was talking to Nurse Crane. Maybe she said something about it, between the chips and when she left. Tim went up to his room but he knows the two nurses stayed up, talking, until it was pitch dark outside. 

He couldn’t hear what they were saying. He didn’t want to, really. Instead, he played his records, read a travel guide for Bristol that his dad had left behind. It wasn’t like being on holiday, of course, but at least he’d know what they were talking about when they got back. 

There’s a new entertainment palace on Frogmore Street and, apparently, it’s the biggest in Europe. A thousand plastic palm trees lined the place. Yes. He distracted himself with numbers, statistics. A multistory car park by the docks could fit hundreds of cars. The new Severn bridge, due to open in September, will take thousands of cars over to Wales in a day. Numbers made sense to him, even if nothing else did. 

At the bus stop, Trixie is distracting herself too. She is opening and closing her purse. He thinks she must be looking for change for the bus, but she already gave it to him before they left the house. It must be about the nerves then. The being sick too. He tells himself to put it down to that, but inside he knows it’s childish. 

She is nervous, though. She keeps tapping her feet and crossing and uncrossing her legs. Everytime a car motors towards them, she gets up to see if it’s the bus, even when it’s not due yet.   
‘It’ll be ok,’ he says, with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He doesn’t even look at her. He’s worried she’ll shoot him down, brush him off. He doesn’t want her to be nervous around him, if that’s the problem. ‘Whatever it is,’ he adds, quickly, when she doesn’t say anything. 

As she goes to reply, the 45 chugs into view. So instead of speaking, Trixie reaches out and rests her hand on his arm. Tim thinks that says more than a reply, anyway. 

At Nonnatus House, they’re greeted by Nurse Crane and Sister Julienne. He goes with Nurse Crane, down the few steps into the storage cupboard, while Trixie is whisked away by the Sister. She shoots him a look as she goes, over her shoulder, and he realises that this is what she was afraid of. Not the bus, or awkwardness, but a nun. 

‘There are knitted boots that need to go in one box,’ Nurse Crane says, gesturing at a mountain of baby clothes in a jumble of disarray. ‘And vests and such in the little case on the table in the hall.’

She turns around to look at him, an errant hat held in her outstretched hand. He takes it and places it slowly into the box marked ‘accessories’. Nurse Crane seems to sense that he’s not at ease and shuffles closer.

‘Don't worry about her, lad,’ she says, ‘She’s stronger than she looks.’ They’re talking about Trixie again. It seems she’s the center of everything these days - Nurse Crane’s source for concern, his mystery. Trixie even seems to have surprised herself by getting mixed up in all of this. Whatever this is. 

Tim picks up a mess of clothes from the pile. Nurse Crane does the same. They start to sort and pack away. She’s on call, listening out for the telephone. All of the other nurses are out. Nonnatus House is so quiet that he thinks he could probably hear Sister Julienne and Trixie if he listened hard enough.

Nurse Crane hands him a little blue jacket. Tim stares at it for a moment and then looks back up at the nurse. He hesitates, then barrels forward with his thoughts. 

‘Is it about Mr Herewood?’ he asks. His voice is halting, unsure. Nurse Crane looks at him like he’s gone insane. ‘Trixie I mean,’ he says. ‘Is that why everyone’s upset?’

‘Mr Herewood?’ she says. ‘Whatever makes you say that?’ 

‘It’s just Trixie was writing him a letter and-’ but he doesn’t continue. Nurse Crane raises a hand to stop him. When he opens his mouth again, she throws a plain vest at him, in a bid to interrupt. It falls into a puddle at his feet.

‘I think you’ll find Mr Herewood is still out of the country,’ Nurse Crane bristles. 

‘And that Trixie is just looking for someone one to talk to - as a friend, of course.’ 

Tim turns back to the clothes. He thought, maybe, because of Nurse Gilbert and what happened - but it seems he’s got it terribly wrong. Beside him, Nurse Crane softens a little. 

‘It’s a beastly business, that’s all, lad. Nothing to do with the vicar.’ She pauses, folds a little pink dress and presses it into his empty hands. ‘You are too young to get mixed up in things like this.’

‘But here I am,’ he says. Tim’s part of it now, they’ve made him. His dad and mum, and he suspects, Sister Julienne. Sending Trixie to stay with him seems the kind of plan they’d make. 

He and Nurse Crane sort the clothes in silence for a while. There’s a nice rhythm to it: the softness of the clothes, the newness they imply, the simple passing and placing. They’re about half way done when the doorway shadows and two figures appear at the storage room door. 

Trixie and Sister Julienne. They’ve tried to hide it, but it’s clear to them all that Trixie’s been crying. 

Sister Julienne talks, in a bid to distract from other questions. She says, ‘Tim,’ with an open smile and open arms. ‘Tim, I heard you’ll be leaving us for university soon.’ 

‘September,’ he says, still caught in the middle of the clothes, the boxes over flowing beside him. Trixie bridges the gap between them and starts, silently, to collect vests from the central pile. 

‘So not yet, then,’ Sister Julienne says, forging forward with her tangent. It’s a welcome one, however, and soon each of the women are asking him in turn. ‘How did your exams go?’ asks Nurse Crane, ‘Where are you headed off to?’ chimes the Sister, while Trixie, with her face set in a beaming smile, looks right at him and asks, ‘You must be excited to go somewhere new? He answers the questions dutifully, even though he would usually hate being such a centre of interest. 

Eventually, the little party is broken up by the telephone ringing. Nurse Crane moves as fast as he’s ever seen her in a bid to catch it, while Sister Julienne departs soon after, under the excuse of impending paperwork. It leaves him and Trixie, and a quickly diminishing pile of baby garments. 

‘Are you alright?’ he asks tentatively, when they’re nearly finished. She keeps folding and doesn’t look up. 

‘Oh, I'm fabulous, sweetie. Don’t you worry.’ 

She stops for a moment, holding onto the collar of a particularly fetching blue vest. He goes to say something, an apology or a question, he’s not sure which, but she gets there first. She snaps up, leaving the sadness behind. 

‘These are going to Chummy, you know,’ Trixie says. ‘She’s still at the mother and baby home.’ 

He nods and turns away a little. Tim remembers that place - Astor Lodge, with the blown light bulbs and unwashed sheets - how cold it was, how dad said he should’ve stayed in the car. He remembers that Angela probably came from somewhere like that. He wonders if she wore clothes like these, folded by strangers with good intentions and secrets. 

‘Come on,’ Trixie says, when they’re done, ‘If you’re lucky, they’ll be some cake in the kitchen.’ 

And, as she is more often than not, Trixie Franklin is right. 

He whiles away the afternoon and evening back at home, listening to records and reading a good book. Trixie watches Songs of Praise and then does some knitting, though she doesn’t look too impressed with either. 

Tim goes to bed while she’s dealing with stitches in the lamplight. He lies in bed and thinks about all those questions they asked about University. September felt so far off when he spoke of it that afternoon, but now it doesn’t. Now it seems to be rushing at him, too fast. All too fast. 

He dreams when he sleeps. Vivid and violent. Mixed up images and screams, things that don’t make any sense. There might be his mother’s face, her voice, but he can’t quite remember. She’s fading, fading. He can’t recall how she sounded, now. 

When he sits up, he looks at the clock on his bedside table. It’s 2.17 am. The middle of the night. A nightmare. A nightmare woke him.

Tim pushes his blanket away and thumps his fists against his chest lightly, trying to get his heart beating normally. Before he went to boarding school, he hadn’t had nightmares since the iron lung, and before then since his mother died. And now, they seem more likely than not, every time he goes to sleep. 

He creeps to the hallway, intent on heading to the bathroom to splash water on his face. But when he opens his door, he notices that light is spilling out into the corridor from Trixie’s room. It’s bright and he blinks to adjust his eyes. At first he thinks she’s there, in the light, but it’s just a shadow. He steps out, bleary, still feeling heavy from the dream. 

Trixie comes into view, sitting on the top step of the stairs, clad in green silk pyjamas. She turns around to look at him. He stares at her, caught. It’s two in the morning, and here they both are. 

‘Come here,’ she says, tapping the floor beside her. Tim climbs over and sits there, with his knees drawn up to his chest. She’s smoking, the end of the cigarette burning bright red in the darkness. ‘What woke you?’ she asks. 

There’s a concern in her voice that reminds him of mum. So kind and soft. Just as soft as silk. 

‘Nothing,’ he says, dismissing, ‘just dreams.’ He waves a hand, says goodbye to the vicious images that have only just stopped plaguing him. 

‘Well,’ Trixie says, ‘that’s no fun.’ She pauses and takes a long drag of her cigarette, though it’s smoked so short he’s not sure how she’s not burning her fingertips. 

‘And you?’ he asks. Sleep has given his voice a confidence he lacks in day. 

Maybe he’s still fuzzy around the edges. In any case, Trixie looks across at him in the moonlight. She crosses her legs, sighs.

‘I'm going to tell you something, Tim, and you must promise to keep it a secret.’

‘Is it why you’re here?’ 

She nods. Her cigarette has gone out. She doesn’t hesitate. Her voice doesn’t shake. Time doesn’t know how she manages it. ‘It’s a baby. I’m going to have a baby.’ 

So no going back to Nonnatus, no returning to nursing - not anytime soon. Unmarried, unsure. She is looking right at him, watching for his reaction. It feels like they've been in this house together three months, not three days. 

‘Congratulations?’ he says. He scrambles quickly for something else. 

He grasps at it in the darkness. ‘It doesn’t make a difference to me. You’re still Trixie, aren’t you?’ 

She laughs and leans forward so that her forehead is resting on his shoulder. He wonders if she is praying but she soon springs back up and dusts herself down. there was a flicker, just for a moment. It seemed a different girl was there, sitting beside him. 

‘Now, Tim,’ she says, with her trademark twinkle, ‘I’m sure I spied some Horlicks in the cupboard while we were cooking.’   
Yes, of course. Horlicks. Rumours say Horlicks can heal anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Tim and Trixie go on an adventure and meet up with our favourite redhead and her girl friend. But everything’s not exactly as it seems....


	4. Chapter 4

They don’t talk about it much, certainly not to start with. After the Horlicks, they fall back to their respective rooms, the truth beside them. He sleeps, but still not wonderfully. The anxiety comes back, stronger; his heart won’t still. He’s started to worry about Trixie, too, and himself. September looms like a building from a gothic horror, a sight he can’t escape from. 

He dismissed the dreams before, but he’s not sure how long that can last. 

In the morning, Trixie seems lighter, as if she no longer has to hide from him. She laughs, eyes on fire with mischief, over a bowl of bran flakes. They talk about the book he’s reading, an early Agatha Christie, and she looks aghast when she accidentally gives away the killer. 

It’s easier now, even if they don’t say the word ‘baby’ or ‘mistake’, even if they don’t address her fall, or her fate here with him. They just slip into an odd kind of camaraderie, like kids on a school trip who laugh at stupid jokes. She seems younger, freeer. Maybe it’s just not being around so many nuns, a thought that makes him laugh.

Trixie spends most of her day writing letters. It’s not just Tom, but others. He sees Jenny’s name, one for Chummy. Old friends, long past. She writes for hours, starting and restarting. There’s a little mountain of paper on the table between them, dyed with running ink. 

Tim plays cards, solitaire, and then tries to write a letter of his own. Call it solidarity. He notices that Trixie, unlike him, isn’t writing to her family - no Franklins rise from the ink and present themselves. Mainly it’s people he knows. It seems Trixie has only ever really existed in Poplar, right here, within this community. Tim doesn’t think he exists many other places either. 

They revolve around the baby for three days, just him and Trixie - letters written, posted, other tasks brought to hand. Trixie bakes an actual, real, decent cake, while Tim turns his time to Rolling Stones magazine. 

They watch television together, random programmes neither have ever seen before. They drink Horlicks before they go to bed and they pretend they sleep well, even if they can trace each other’s footsteps in the night. 

Tim likes the pattern they fall into. Maybe he should ask about the baby but it seems so insignificant, because it doesn’t define Trixie. She just is, like he is. 

‘I’ve got your back,’ he says, nervously, one evening. He thinks for a moment that she hasn’t heard him. But then she turns to look at him and she thinks she’s crying, but she’s so quiet. 

‘That’s very nice of you,’ she says. ‘But   
you don’t have to, sweetie.’ 

‘I do,’ he says and he is certain, oh so certain. ‘Of course I do.’

It’s three days, and then Trixie gets a letter. Nurse Crane brings them in the morning before rounds, along with a slab of almond cherry cake that she’s snatched from the tin before Sister Monica Joan can get her hands on it. 

It’s the letter that makes Trixie say, over a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich, ‘Do you want to go on an adventure?’ like the last three days have been perfectly, completely, normal. Tim has no idea what the letter says, but it’s changed something in Trixie. There’s a purpose in her now, a certainty. 

‘An adventure?’ 

‘Yes, sweetie. Let’s have some fun.’ 

It turns out that fun is a two day trip to Oxford. Trixie calls it a little holiday, says it’s something they both deserve. They pack two little holdalls he finds stuffed into the landing cupboard, nothing like the certainly, sad, finality of the pink suitcase. 

A bus first, across ground to Paddington Station. They buy train tickets in the dingy main office, and Tim frets while Trixie smokes and neither of them say what a totally mad idea this is. 

He knows there’s something else in Oxford - something that’s not just the castle and the waterfront and the things she keeps telling him they're going for.   
It’s in the way she says, ‘Oh and it’ll be so warm, just wonderful. We can boat down the river if you’d like?’ and she keeps adding. More and more things, and he knows there’s a big gaping hole in it all. 

Yet there’s something magical in her energy. An unavoidable magnetism in the way she keeps forging forward, smoking cigarette after cigarette, summer hat affixed to her head. She seems like Trixie, so like her that he’s worried to say anything. But, as they swap the concrete jungles of London and the countryside spins into view, he pushes his luck. 

‘Who was the letter from?’ he asks.   
There are fields outside the window and he’s looking at them. Trixie is looking at her reflection in a compact mirror, touching up her lipstick. She peers at him over the top, lips pursed.

‘You enjoyed Cubs, didn’t you?’ she suddenly says. He swings around from the window to stare at her. Has she gone mad? Is that what this is? 

‘Yes?’ he says, uncertainly. She laughs. 

‘So you liked Nurse Mount, then?’ 

‘Nurse….Mount?’ 

‘Tall, ginger, voice like cut glass.’

‘I remember her, Trixie.’ 

‘That’s good, then. We’re going to see her.’ She shuts the compact suddenly and raises an eyebrow at him. ‘And Nurse Busby, of course. Those two are as thick as thieves.’

They speed towards Oxford, with their little cases and adventure on the seat next to them. The two of them play gin rummy, the cards invading the table in front of them. She wins the first game, of course and, soon, a competitive streak overcomes them both. 

He thinks he should probably telephone someone when they get there, let them know where they are. There’s something exciting in the idea of not being able to be found - of being missing. It doesn’t even seem to cross Trixie’s mind, at least not on the surface. But Tim gets the feeling she’s the kind of woman who hides a lot behind a smile and a cigarette. 

‘Another game?’ she asks, holding the cards aloft like a victory prize. He laughs. 

‘I’ll beat you this time,’ he says. She starts to shuffle the cards. 

It turns out Tim is wrong. 

They meet Patsy and Delia at the train station. Trixie seeks them out in the midst of the clamouring crowd, cutting through the grasping hands and too close faces. 

Emerging from the smoke, the haze, the pair are hanging by a lamppost, looking exactly as they did when he last saw them. When was that? Was it really Barbara and Tom’s wedding? That was years ago. The two of them look like a picture postcard: long coats, bright lipstick. 

He wonders what he and Trixie look like, the odd pair. He feels like a trailing dog, interrupting.

‘Trixie!’ Delia calls, while Patsy straight up ignores greetings and pulls her blonde friend straight into a hug. There seems to be an oversight. A Tim shaped oversight. Trixie didn’t tell them he was coming, obviously. 

Despite this, he doesn’t feel aggrieved. They’ve all had such a lot on their minds these last few days. And it doesn’t matter, not really, because Patsy spies him over Trixie’s shoulder and screams ‘Little Timothy Turner?’ with such sudden surprise that they all start laughing. 

‘Oh, yes,’ Trixie says, between bouts of giggles. ‘I brought Tim for backup. I would’ve never got across London without him.’ 

It’s a lie. But it’s a lie that makes him feel valued. He feels his chest puff out, a sense of belonging. He’s supposed to be here. Trxie wanted him here. It’s their adventure, after all. 

It turns out that Patsy and Delia have been living in Oxford for six months, a little flat down near the river with flowers in the window. They brought the dog, Garbo, with them too and promise to introduce her to Tim if they’ve got time. 

‘And it was beautiful in Scotland,’ Patsy says, as they wind down cobbled streets towards the university buildings. 

‘But,’ Delia says, taking over the story, bumping slightly into her redheads friend, ‘it did rain a bloody lot.’ 

He should feel out of place; it would be easy for the three midwives to drift off to personal stories, to jokes he doesn’t understand. But they make an effort to include him - talking about university, making comments about the nuns that make them all laugh. Delia even asks, quietly and patiently, after his brother and sisters. 

They talk fondly of Poplar. ‘In Aberdeen, I always felt one rain storm away from returning,’ says Patsy, dramatically spinning around a street corner. 

‘What about here?’ Trixie asks. They’re walking towards a bed and breakfast in the town square, one that Patsy says is quite delightful. 

‘Here feels more like London - but it’s miles less busy,’ says Delia, because Patsy has taken to striding forward with purpose. That’s the woman he remembers from the Cubs, full of power and poise - one whistle away from a scolding with a smile. Tim would happily admit he was scared of Akela Mount when he was a boy, but there’s something much less frightening about her purpose now he’s older. 

Now, at seventeen, he wishes he could walk the world with that kind of confidence. 

When they find it, Trixie and Patsy throw themselves at the mercy of the B&B while he and Delia wait on the street corner. They perch on stone steps across the road, eating chips that Tim picked up during the walk. 

‘So your whole family is on holiday?’ she asks, chip halfway to her mouth. Tim’s not sure he’s ever really had a conversation with Delia Busby - certainly not one where it’s just the two of them. But then, a week ago his longest conversation with Trixie had been ten minutes max. 

Tim nods in answer to her question and then stuffs a handful of chips into his mouth for good measure. 

‘Why didn’t you go?’ Delia asks, her voice liltingly calm. It would seem an intrusion from most people, but her voice is so soft, so concerned. He sees why she became a nurse. She’d have a good bedside manner, this one. 

They suspend the chip eating. This conversation demands their full attention.

‘A break, I guess?’ 

‘Are your siblings a bit overwhelming?’ she suggests. Delia doesn’t seem the kind of person to demand anything of anyone, even if she is right. ‘Must be nice to get some freedom, ‘eh?’   
He smiles and looks down. There’s a light burn of embarrassment on his cheeks. 

‘You’re a fine young man,’ she says, ‘It’ll all be alright?’ 

‘What will?’ 

‘Whatever you're so worried about.’

He looks up at her and meets her eye. Is it that easy to see? His panic, the deep seated fear. An adventure, they said. No one told him a Welsh midwife was going to give him life advice. 

‘Take it from someone who literally lost their memory, Tim,’ she says. ‘The world will throw a lot at you, but nothing is ever too hard to overcome.’ 

Delia reaches over the chips and ruffles his hair. 

‘Thank you,’ he says. 

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ She shakes her head and raises her hands in mock surrender. She’s half laughing, but there’s a deep kind of worry he can see behind her eyes. The quiet kind, the kind Tim has in his heart. 

Across the street, the door to the B&B is flung open in spectacular style. Trixie Franklin, style icon of 1966, stands framed in the midday sun. 

‘Tim,’ she announced with trademark flair, ‘your palace awaits.’ 

The only thing he can think as he walks towards her is just quite how mad this really is. But he throws that thought away. Delia is right. He’ll overcome this. Trixie will too. He promises himself that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to everyone who’s read and taken time to kudos/comment - it’s really given me a boost. 
> 
> Next time: Get ready for further adventures with Pasty and Delia while Tim finally calls his Dad and Trixie attempts to open up about her family.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this fic!

He rests his bag on the B&B bed. It’s a single room, with a narrow bed and a thin slit of a window overlooking the streets below. He slides his cases into the corner and sits at the handily provided desk. Trixie is across the hall, unpacking and preparing - whatever that means.

Delia and Patsy have headed off to a cafe around the corner, one that does ‘spectacular’ afternoon tea, according to all known sources. It’s where they’re meeting at five, once they’ve settled in here, in between the pink striped wallpaper and the frilly doilies on every surface.

It feels like he’s wandered into Granny Parker’s house, if she had a thousand pounds to spend on eau de parfum and complimentary shortbread biscuits. He bounces up and down on the mattress and promises himself he will sleep better here than he does at home, than he has since the return from boarding school. 

There’s a telephone on the table in the hall and he approaches it with caution. The lady on the desk said they could use it, that it came with the price of the night, but he’s still apprehensive. Tim has paid for everything so far out of his savings, the coins he’s stashed in his piggy bank since he was small. All those half terms cleaning implements and sorting clothes for dad has finally had a use. 

For emergencies he’s got the rolled up bank notes his parents left for him when they went off, all carefully calculated and thought through. But he won’t use that here. Here is an adventure, and he’ll pay.

Mum left him the contact number on a scrap of paper and made him promise to use it. So now’s a better time than ever. He lifts up the receiver, blood red, and dials quickly. He listens to the rings like a lullaby. 

Trixie’s door is propped open and he can see her laying out her things on the bedside table: bottles and tubes and cream. Things he doesn’t understand. 

The line clicks. A Bristolian hotel manager barks into his ear and Tim hurriedly asks for his father. 

‘Patrick Turner, please,’ he says. ‘He’s a guest.’ 

The manager puts him on hold and goes to search. While he’s waiting Trixie comes to the door and hangs there, in and out, hand on hip. 

‘Family?’ she asks. He nods. She watches him for a moment, a maternal kind of look about her. Tim remembers again about the baby. She’ll be a mother, Trixie, she will. He wonders if she’ll keep the baby but it’s not, it won’t ever be, his place to ask. She’d make a good mother - has brought enough babies into this world and held them so delicately. And she is kind, with soft hands and an open heart. Trixie will make a good mother, if that’s what she wants. 

‘Timothy?’ crackles his father, all the way from Bristol. Trixie is still watching him, and Tim doesn’t even mind it. There’s a comfort in knowing she’s watching out, keeping an eye. 

‘Timothy?’ his dad says, again. In the background, the clamorous sounds of his siblings can be heard, complete with mum trying to hush them. ‘We were about to go down to the docks. The guide says you can see some fantastic views.’ 

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to interrupt.’ 

Dad dismisses his fears, but sounds sharp when he says, ‘Did the manager say you were calling from Oxford?’ 

‘Yes, that’s right.’ 

‘Whatever are you doing there?’ 

There’s a sudden realisation now - Tim’s actually gone and done it, something that actually surprises his parents. He’s got this feeling of detachment about it all - it’s Trixie, in that doorway, who feels real. His dad is a quiet voice at the end of a bad line. He could be anywhere on earth for Tim, or at least feels it. 

‘It’s an adventure. Just a few days.’ 

‘On your own?’ 

Tim pauses, catches his breath. Trixie is lighting a cigarette. The clock on the mantle in the room behind here says it’s ten to five. 

‘No - no. I’m with Nurse Franklin.’ 

Tim makes his excuses soon after that, without really explaining why he has travelled halfway across the country with Trixie. He knows his dad is concerned, but he’s also frazzled because there’s three kids under eight and they’re all tugging at his coat and going on about the docks. 

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ his father says as a parting message. Tim’s got a feeling that’s not going to happen. 

He and Trixie walk towards the cafe side by side. Tim’s got his hands stuffed in his pockets and she’s smoking, again. She’s nervous, with that veneer of confidence back in full force. Her heels, maddening in the circumstances, click frequently against the cobbles and it’s a great surprise she doesn’t twist an ankle and collapse on him. But Trixie’s full of surprising things like that. He thinks she always has been. 

They stop short of the cafe, and while they can see Patsy and Delia through the window, they haven’t been spotted yet. Trixie brushes down the front of her dress and smokes furiously, as if she’s preparing for something. Tim jumps from foot to foot, affected by her unsettled nature. 

Trixie stares at her reflection in a barbers’ shop window. And then she’s looking at him and he feels the need to brush down his shirt too, just to be like her. 

‘What’s wrong?’ he says. He looks over her shoulder at the cafe, at the pair in the window waiting for them. Is there something Trixie is trying to hide from them? Or is it from him, is Tim about to be sent back to the B&B, no longer needed - an afterthought, an outlier.

But instead of that, Trixie steps forward. He can smell her perfume. It reminds him of mum, and of his real mother too. A sense of the scent, a memory that draws him back. 

‘Thanks for being such a rock, Tim,’ she says, patting him on his shoulder. They stare at each other for a moment, unsure how to proceed. She looks away and says, ‘You know, sometimes you remind me of my brother,’ and then walks away. He watches her go for a moment, head turned to one side. 

He had no idea. Not at all. He wonders what happened to Trixie Franklin’s brother. 

At the cafe they eat afternoon tea and Tim fits in, more than he thought he would. Trixie, especially, makes an effort. They talk about school: the little rural Welsh one Delia went to, the inner city madhouse afforded to Trixie. Tim and Patsy swap stories about beastly boarding schools. 

It turns out that some things are universal, and one of them is horrible maths teachers. He’s never really had people to talk to, not like this, not for a while. There were friends, of course - Jack from Cubs, others. But they fell away a little with the polio and it was harder to get them back. At boarding school, so far away, so ill fitted to the rigors and rules, he talked but it seemed it was rare for people to listen. 

He looks between the women at the table. Trixie’s comment about her brother has got him wondering - he’s known these people years, and yet he knows so little about them. They, to him, spontaneously appeared one day at Nonnatus House: they had no childhoods, no best friends, no brothers. They just were - the nurses and midwives of the Poplar area. When he was little, he thought they were born with the bike. 

But in the last week, and in the last few hours here, they’ve come to life. For him, yes - they are real, they are human. And in Trixie’s case, she is hurting. They’re still glamorous, cigarettes held in outstretched fingers, full of mystery that he still can’t claim to understand. 

As they walk back to the B&B, Trixie threads her arm through his and leans close. She’s looking at him again, when she thinks he’s turned away. Thinking of that brother again, most likely - as if out of the corner of her eye she’ll see that boy too.

‘Was he older than you?’ Tim asks. Trixie stares forward, still holding him close. ‘Your brother?’ 

‘Older,’ she says, as they trapeze down the cobbles. ‘Lots.’ 

‘What happened to him?’ 

‘Oh Tim, I think that’s a story for another time.’

He nods. There’s something infinitely sad in the way she speaks. Another time, yes. Not for this adventure but another. 

The next day, they meet Patsy and Delia near the college buildings. They weave their way through a market on the way, one that reminds him of London with hagglers hawking prices at every turn. He slept better in the B&B, enveloped by the soft pillows and sheeps wool blanket. No nightmares, no dreams even. 

Trixie didn’t sleep well, though she only makes a brief reference to it. Forging through, that’s what she says. There are lines by her eyes, which she covers with makeup but he saw before, when she joined him in the ever so flowery B&B breakfast room. 

Patsy and Delia are giving them a tour - just a quick one, a couple of the best sights. Tim trails a little from the off, letting the ladies gossip amongst themselves about people he doesn’t know or has little interest in. He doesn’t mind it - it’s nice to take in the town from the back, with Patsy and Delia taking it in turns to introduce sights. The river, here to your left, the university library to your right. It’s pretty, that’s sure - quaint. It’s the kind of place his father should probably retire, when the time comes. 

Tim falls to the back until Patsy spots him, and hauls him to the front. Delia and Trixie are caught in a long, detailed discussion about midwifery and how it differs in Scotland, they barely even seem to notice. So he’s at the front now, with the redhead ex-Cub wrangler right beside him. 

‘I sense this all might be very strange for you,’ she says, conspiratorially, leaning close in.

‘Something like that,’ he says, laughing a little. They wander down a side street, past an Italian restaurant and a pub. ‘Is it nice to see Trixie?’ 

‘Oh yes. It’s absolutely wonderful,’ Patsy says, lighting up, grinning. But then her face clouds over, like something horrible has dawned on her. 

‘You mustn’t listen to what people say,’ she says, darkly serious. Patsy looks over her shoulder and Tim does too. They’re looking at Trixie. ‘It won’t be nice. People will be kind, mostly. Some won’t.’ 

‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ 

‘It might not, darling,’ she says, ‘But sometimes other people can be incredibly cruel about things they don’t, or won’t, understand.’ 

Tim nods. Life has taught him that already, but he senses the childish insensitivity he faced as a polio-stricken boy is not a patch on what awaits Trixie in future. Stupid, inherently he wants to protect her from it all. He meant it when he said he’d have her back. 

‘And now,’ Patsy says, as Delia does as a dramatic drum roll and they emerge round a corner, ‘who feels like a pot of well earned tea?’ 

He stands back while Trixie says her goodbyes at the train station. There’s an undercurrent of emotion that he doesn’t wish to invade. A silent, unsaid, finality - they all know that the next time they meet, things will have changed. And as of now, they’re unsure whether it’ll be for the better or the worse. 

They rope him in, eventually: Delia first, arms thrown around, a lilting, up and down goodbye whispered into his ear. Patsy squeezes his hand solidly and tells him to take care of Trixie. 

And then they’re on the train, chugging away and out of Oxford. Trixie seems captivated by the window, the steady passing of fields merging into tower blocks. The parting has hurt her, he can see it in the way she won’t look at him. They are drifting from some impossible place back to reality. 

‘Home now,’ she says, nodding and turning to look at him. 

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Home.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Now back in Poplar, Trixie has an accident. Calling upon our favourite midwives, it’s not long before Nurse Dyer shows up...


	6. Chapter 6

The journey home from Oxford isn’t particularly noteworthy. Tim and Trixie play cards, drink lemonade, laugh. The lines of friendship between them are starting to blur - the distance they have always had from each other is fading. The age gap ceases to be important. He’s on her side, that’s it. 

If he had to describe it, if someone asked, he guessed Trixie was right when she mentioned her brother. It’s like that, both protective over the other, but with different priorities and places. It’s odd though, he thinks, because Tim’s no one’s younger brother and it seems Trixie’s only got an older one. So new roles, for the both of them. He fits it, it’s like he’s been waiting for it. 

They stay like that in the aftermath of Oxford, but they still don’t talk about the baby or the not sleeping. She doesn’t ask him if his parents were alright with the holiday and he doesn't say. In the end, dad was too busy to call back, which was expected but disappointing. Tim’s used to it by now. 

One night, three or four days after their return, Trixie and Tim start a jigsaw puzzle. Together, they throw everything off the coffee table, stash magazines in piles by the telephone, craft supplies in a bucket near the door. Then out come the pieces, all one thousand of them. 

‘I’ve never been much of a puzzle girl,’ Trixie says, searching for the corners. ‘But there’s something oddly relaxing about it.’ 

Tim nods, agrees with her. He’s been putting together spliced scenes since he was little. It was one of his mother’s favourite pastimes and they used to devote every Sunday afternoon to it - up until she got sick. He has a vague memory of his dad promising to continue with it, after, but he got too busy and all the jigsaws got put away. 

This is a new one. They didn’t keep the old ones. Tim bought this one - pastoral scene of sheep herding - from the toy shop on Crisp Street a Thursday back - something to do, to pass the time. 

Trixie clips two pieces of sky together and looks up at him. They’re kneeling by the table and she’s got a hand on her forehead. 

‘Are you ok?’ he asks. She forces a smile, he can tell when she does it now. It’s never a good sign - the mark of someone who has smiled too long, now. Far too long. 

Trixie shrugs. ‘Just a headache, sweetie,’ but there’s something in the way she grimaces when she looks down at the puzzle that concerns him. He reaches out to put his hand on her shoulder but she brushes him away and keeps searching for pieces. 

Tim rests his hands on his thighs, and scans the table while keeping an eye out on Trixie. 

‘You know, I was thinking of having Shepherd’s pie for dinner,’ she says, pretending to be absent minded, distracting from her state of health. ‘Mrs B dropped a recipe over yesterday.’ 

He doesn’t say anything. He rather thinks a dish that complicated is out of the range of their dual cooking powers, especially if Trixie’s not feeling 100%. Tim still has war flashbacks to that first cake every time they try and attempt something new. So far they’ve massacred: 1 - a treacle tart, 2 - a casserole, and 3 - a cheese and potato flan. They’ve been relegated to eating ham sandwiches for every meal. 

‘Ha!’ Trixie says, loudly, wafting a puzzle piece at him. 

‘A corner!’ Tim says, with possibly too much energy. Trixie starts to laugh, placing the piece down in the correct space. He turns to pass her a row of connected sky pieces, trying to see if they fit with the newly discovered corner, but Trixie’s standing up. Maybe she’s going to get some tea, even though she’s not said anything. 

He watches her as if she’s moving in slow motion, swaying even though there’s no breeze. It’s been a hot day, it’s July after all, but it’s late afternoon and the heat of the day has mostly passed. But Trixie looks like she’s standing directly under the sun in the middle of a headwave, moving dramatically from side to side. 

And then she falls, a great swoop through the air, and Tim’s jumping up to try and catch her. He’s up and over and he’s still too late. In her path is a glass of water, which she catches with an outstretched hand and crashes to the floor. 

Tim stands for a heartbeat looking over at her. He was useless, totally useless, and now she’s lying on the carpet completely out: a smashed glass under her arm and blood seeping into mum’s prized sheep’s wool rug. 

‘Trixie?’ he says, panic rising in his chest. This is like a dream. Like a nightmare. ‘Trixie, can you hear me?’ 

But there’s no response. 

‘Hello this is Nonnatus House, Midwife speaking.’ It’s Nurse Dyer, crisp and polite. 

‘Help me,’ he says, ‘Oh please help me. It’s Trixie.’ 

By the time he’s explained what’s happened, he swears Valerie Dyer is already on her bike. 

She turns up at six o’clock, fifteen minutes after Trixie’s spectacular faint. Val’s in her nurse’s uniform, minus the cape, and has her official bag clutched in her hand. Tim leads her into the living room, where Trixie, who has come around, is propped up on the sofa. 

It took five minutes and a cold flannel pressed to the face to wake her up and she’s still the colour of a ghost. 

‘Let’s see what we’ve got here, then,’ Val says, channeling her army days. She kneels by Trixie, careful to avoid the crushed remains of the glass. ‘Could you get us some water, Tim?’ she asks, before turning back to her patient. Trixie hasn’t said anything since it happened, and he swears her hands are shaking, if only a little. 

He rushes to get the water. He keeps looking over his shoulder to check nothing’s changed. He’s worried about why Trixie fainted, of course, but he’s more alarmed by the cut on the palm of her hand, where the glass was impaled when she landed. There’s a great gash, the source of the blood that now specks the rug. 

He offers the cup to Trixie and watches her drink it down quickly. Nurse Dyer is taking her blood pressure and the sound of the cuff inflating is oddly comforting to them all. Up and up and up, the dial spinning round like an alarm clock gone crazy. 

‘Well,’ Nurse Dyer says, shaking her head. ‘Your blood pressure’s high.’ 

‘Is that why?’ Tim says, hovering with his arms folded. 

Trixie, from her place on the ground, looks up at him. ‘Probably,’ she says, her voice croaky. Nurse Dyer is packing the blood pressure cuff back up. They turn their attention to the cut, gaping and still bleeding. 

Tim helps Trixie up so she’s sitting at the kitchen table. It’s at this point he becomes certain that all plans for a shepherd’s pie have gone square out the window. 

‘I’m going to bandage this,’ Nurse Dyer says. ‘If it doesn’t heal soon, we’ll probably have to get Doctor Turner to look at it.’ 

‘When he gets back,’ Trixie says, more sharply that he thinks she intended. Tim’s still standing up, fretting, pacing. The two women keep looking over at him and expecting him to stop. 

‘I can call him if you like,’ he says. Nurse Dyer concentrates on finding the sterilized gauze in her bag, but Trixie shakes her head. There’s colour in her cheeks now, but he still feels like she’s delicate. He even worried about the jigsaw now, second guessing if it was a good idea. They should’ve just watched the television.

‘No, Tim, you don’t have to do that. I’ll go and see the locum if I need to.’ Her hand is lying on the kitchen table and the bleeding has stopped. Now Tim can see the cut, three or so centimetres in length, across the gap where the life line usually sits. 

‘Can you move your fingers for me, Trixie?’ Nurse Dyer asks. 

‘There’s no lasting damage,’ comes the reply from the blonde, flexing her fingers one by one. ‘See?’ 

‘Now,’ Nurse Dyer says, wrapping Trixie’s hand in a bandage, ‘you mustn't over do it. In your condition.’ Nurse Dyer gives Tim a sidewards glacé, as if to motion to him that this is ‘an adult conversation’ and it isn’t his place to stay. 

‘He knows, Valerie,’ Trixie jumps in, testing the motion of her wrist. Nurse Dyer nods slowly, gives him a double take, and then turns back to the table. 

‘Given the baby,’ she says, matter of factly, ‘I’d just rest.’ 

‘I was doing a jigsaw, not running a marathon.’ 

‘Still. I’ll bet Timothy here will be able to help. And I’m around too, if you need anything.’ 

Nurse Dyer has finished repacking her bag. She doesn’t look like she wants to leave. Trixie is leaning back in her chair, stretching her shoulders. 

‘Thank you for being such a dear, Val,’ Trixie says. Her voice is quiet and she hasn’t looked up from the table. Tim is still now, sitting on the sideboard and watching the two Nurses before him. 

‘Now,’ Trixie says with a flourish, ‘I’m going to freshen myself up.’ 

Before Tim or Nurse Dyer have the time to stop her, Trixie’s off, flouncing up the stairs with steady feet that defy the fainting fit just an hour before. They just watch her go. 

When they hear the bathroom door shut, their eyes meet across the table. Nurse Dyer has one hand on her bag, and while Tim expects her to make just as sudden an exit, she actually moves the leather satchel to the floor. 

She says, ‘You’ve got to watch her now,’ and nods her head. 

‘She’s a midwife.’

‘And that’s the dangerous thing. She thinks everything will be just fine because she knows everything.’ 

‘And will she?’ Tim asks, hesitantly. ‘Be ok?’

‘Oh,’ she says, quickly, tapping her fingers against the table top. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’ 

‘It could be anemia, couldn’t it?’ Tim suggests. Nurse Dyer laughs, her face an open picture. She looks surprised. 

‘You’re a smart one, aren’t you? 

‘She should have a blood test.’ 

‘I’m sure Trixie knows that,’ Nurse Dyer says. 

Tim falls quiet. He’s thinking about Trixie. Anemia can cause a person to feel very tired, so he’ll watch out for that. A headache can also be a sign of preeclampsia, but that’s only after 20 weeks. Tim has no idea how pregnant Trixie is, but Nurse Dyer doesn’t seem all that worried about that. She didn't even check to see if the ankles were swollen. 

‘But, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Timothy,’ Nurse Dyer says, conspiratorially, ‘you remind me of my cousin Jacob. Always caring about other people. I’d say Trixie was in good hands, don’t you think.’ 

He flushes with embarrassment, and Nurse Dyer is still smiling at him. Tim pushes himself off the side board and lands with a thud on the floor. As he goes to walk towards the table, the doorbell rings. It surprises Tim, who knows there’s no one else expected at the house this evening. Nurse Dyer busies herself, starting to scrub the blood off the table. 

Tim approaches the door with caution, though he’s not completely sure why - it’s more than likely it’s just the nosey next door neighbour enquiring with ‘concern’ as to why a nurse has been at the house for so long. 

He lifts the latch and swings the door open. 

‘I hope you have room for one more, precious,’ says Lucille Anderson, holding a Shepherd’s Pie in her arms like a baby. 

From behind him, Nurse Dyer laughs. Tim can’t help but laugh too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Tim is reminded of his mother, while Trixie makes an announcement about her stay at the Turners’ house.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to everyone who’s read the fic so far - I’m really enjoying writing it :) Also, a massive shout out to anyone who’s commented, it’s great to interact with the CTM fandom!

Nurse Anderson slots in nicely. The meal she brings takes centre stage - one of Nonnatus’ best Shepherds Pie and miles better than anything Tim and Trixie could’ve made, even if they’d tried their hardest. 

At first, Nurses Dyer and Anderson talk amongst themselves. Tim is collecting cutlery, searching for plates and cups, clattering away in the corner so he can’t hear them. He guesses they’re talking about Trixie, though, and it doesn’t take a genius to realise why. The nurses, worried about their friend, have taken this evening to descend on the house. It’s a protection instinct, a panic, a need. 

While Tim is searching for a serving spoon, Nurse Dyer disappears upstairs. That leaves just him and Nurse Anderson, who turns to fiddling with the table cloth for no apparent reason.

‘Nurse Crane might pop by,’ Nurse Anderson says, looking up. She’s smiling, but there’s a worry in the lines around her face. She seems troubled by something - different from Trixie’s ‘get on with it’ eyes and Nurse Dyer’s ‘gung ho’ attitude. ‘She dropped me here before she went to her Spanish lesson.’ 

Tim nods but doesn’t say anything. If he thought he didn’t really know Trixie, he knows Nurse Anderson even less. They sit at the table together, waiting. Above, footsteps creek against the floorboards: two sets, up and down, and up and down. Her eyes still look concerned. She keeps glancing over her shoulder as if that’s how to solve it. She’s fiddling still, her hands unable to be still. 

While they sit there, they strike up a conversation about life in Poplar - her perspective on it given where she moved from, matched with his: the boy who was born here, who has never belonged anywhere else. He’s much like Nurse Dyer in that way. But it’s interesting to hear about someone else's view - someone as soft spoken and caring as Lucille Anderson. 

‘Cyril says he likes fish and chips. That’s his favourite thing about London.’ 

‘Who’s Cyril?’ 

‘Oh,’ Nurse Anderson says, smoothing down her dress and looking down. ‘We step out together.’ 

‘What does he do?’ Tim asks, sure that this Cyril is probably a safer topic than Trixie, whose predicament seems to make Nurse Anderson nervous. 

She raises an eyebrow and smiles, smiles for real this time. ‘He’s studying engineering. But he’s a mechanic in his spare time.’ Now, Tim finds this really cool. He likes cars, has done since he was little and he took the toy one apart and put it back together. Dad was cross because the motor didn’t work after that, but still. 

By the time Nurse Dyer and Trixie emerge from the landing, Nurse Anderson has promised to introduce Tim and Cyril. She says it might do him good, a male influence given just how surrounded he is currently by nurses. They’re laughing about it - really laughing. Nurse Anderson reminds Tim of his mother, his real one. She is comforting just in the way she is, the way she holds herself. 

For a moment, there’s a pang of loss in his chest. Nurse Anderson may be like his mother, but his mother isn’t actually here. Marianne Turner, 36 years of age for the rest of time. Tim blinks and folds his arms. He focuses on Nurse Anderson because she’s here; she’s real. But oh, it feels so close. His mother used to laugh like that, such a long time ago. 

Since his father remarried, there’s been little time for Marianne in their lives. Tim has grown up, grown to love his step-mother almost as much. Almost, of course, because Tim can’t remember how much he loved his real mother- there’s not some dial that calculates the amount and compares it to Shelagh. He’s just got how he feels, and that seems impossible to compare. But he’s got a family now, rebuilt brick by brick from the one he used to have. So Marianne, to Tim, was left behind in the old house: before Teddy, before May, before the bunny rabbits. And while dad belongs to both places, while Tim does too, his real mother can’t. 

‘Cheer up, Sweetie,’ Trixie says, pulling out a chair and sitting beside him. She shoots him a smile and he can’t help but notice that she looks like she’s been crying. But no one comments on it and Tim thinks that the very best thing. No one comments on the far away look in his eye either, Trixie just rests her hand on his shoulder for a fraction of a second and he thinks, we’re not alone, the two of us - any of us. Not today. 

Once everyone is at the table, they start dinner. The nurses talk about how things at Nonnatus are, how Nurse Crane is still running a tight ship - how Nurse Dyer, or ‘Val, please call me Val,’ is missing her roommate. 

‘Well,’ Trixie says, giggling, ‘Tim’s just loved having me here.’ 

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, looking in turn at each of the women around the table. Nurse Anderson, too, insists he drop the formalities, says, ‘Lucille is fine, precious,’ but he still feels like he’s crashed dinner at Nonnatus even though they’re squarely in his house. They’re so easy with each other, conversation bouncing back and forth between them. They’re discussing the illusive Cyril now, about how he and Lucille are going to the pictures in a few days. 

Tim eats his pie and watches them. It makes him miss his friends, the ones kicked to the wind - the boys from school who promised to write but haven’t. The guys from before, from the neighbourhood. Charlie C said that if Tim called, they could go to the pub if they wanted, even if Tim’s not over 18 yet. They all made promises, didn’t they. Even the boys from the Cub’s band have drifted. Before, Tim’s life usually revolved around his younger siblings or his dad’s ever busier work. Not going to the pub. 

It’ll be different at university. That’s what everyone says. University is where you meet your people, whatever that means. But September scares him. Tim pushes these thoughts away. He listens to the nurses. 

‘Sister Monica Joan ate an entire Victoria sponge cake last week,’ Lucille says, eyes wide. 

‘She said,’ Val says, taking over the story, ‘that it was her way of protesting, over what happened to you.’ 

‘Oh yes,’ Trixie laughs, ‘resistance through sponge cake. Sounds just like my cup of tea.’ 

The three women subside into giggles. Tim lurches forward to collect the plates and as he does so, he says, very quickly, ‘What did happen to you?’ He’s looking sideways at Trixie, holding aloft a plate littered with the remains of the pie. 

Trixie fakes a smile again, and rests her hand on his wrist so that he lowers the plate. It clatters against the table. 

‘Coming here, sweetie, it wasn’t exactly my choice.’ They fall quiet for a moment, as if they’re paying a mark of respect to Trixie’s relocation. He sweeps the plate up again and heads over to the sink, where he watches the plate drown in the soapy water. He puts the kettle on, knowing that they’ll all probably want tea now. Tea’s what should come next, not a stiled silence like this. 

In the end, they all have a cup, and the conversation is revived. He’s grateful for that. Of course, it’s not hard to see that Trixie was made to come and stay with him - but a part of him thought, when faced with the baby and the nuns, she chose it. A calculated escape. Now, it seems Tim’s own parents played a part in it, organising behind backs. 

Nurse Crane comes back at eight, after Spanish class finishes. Sadly for all involved, she can’t stay long because she’s on call. So she takes Lucille with her and heads back to Nonnatus. Before she goes, Lucille Anderson promises to swing by again soon, if she can make time around her shifts. 

Val stays a little longer, repeating some tests to check that Trixie’s doing better. But then she’s gone too, out the door and back on the bicycle. So then it’s just him and Trixie. He insists on clearing everything up, and while she puts up a bit of a fight at first, she eventually gives in. She trudges, in her defeat, towards the stairs, where she turns around to look at him. 

‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘for getting help.’ 

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he says, placing a plate on the draining board. 

‘You’re too sweet,’ she says, and then she goes upstairs to read. 

While Trixie continues to improve, her hand healing, her headaches subsiding, Tim struggles to sleep after that afternoon. He keeps having nightmares where she doesn’t wake up, where he’s shaking her and shaking and none of it makes any difference. They bleed into the dreams he has about his mother, his real mother. 

Mariane won’t wake up, though. Not like Trixie, who always seems to smile even when she’s hurting and Tim’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad. He tells himself that it’s stupid - they’re just dreams. Dreams can’t hurt anyone, they just can’t. 

He sits some nights by the open window in his bedroom, right by the edge, as close as he can get. Once or twice, he takes position at the top of the stairs, a dread in his chest he can’t cure - a compulsion in him to check that Trixie is still breathing. He must, his head screams, but he reationalises, knows within him that it won’t help. He creeks the floorboards outside her room in a stupid bid to wake her up that way but it doesn’t work. 

So he sits at the stairs, or in his room, and he holds his head in his hands. It will be over soon, he says to himself, but he’s not sure how. He could blame Trixie and the baby, say that it’s their intrusion into his life that has begun all of this, but even at his most tired he can’t do that. There has been that familiar dread in his chest since the beginning of the summer. He promised that he’d work it out and talk it over with mum when they got back, but it seems too far away now. 

Tim falls asleep on the landing one night, trying to avoid nightmares. He’s woken by Trixie shaking him, lightly. She’s sitting beside him, now, and the sun is spilling through the window at the end of the corridor. 

‘What time is it?’ he asks, sleepily. 

‘7 o’clock,’ Trixie says, dismissing the answer with a wave of her hand. ‘But what are you doing here?’ she says, as he stretches his arms and shoulders. 

‘Couldn't sleep,’ he says. 

‘So you decided that the stairs were better?’ 

He doesn’t answer and looks away. She knows there’s something unsaid, he can see it in the way she looks at him, but she doesn’t press it. 

‘I expect you’re looking forward to life going back to normal, sweetie.’ They’re both looking down the stairs, at the puddle of golden light at the bottom from the sunrise. He shrugs. 

‘When are you leaving?’ he asks, his words slow and precise. He’s been wanting to ask, probably since the night Val and Lucille came over. 

‘When your parents get back.’ 

‘And where do you go, then?’ he asks. He looks across at her. Trixie is striped back, makeupless, in silk pyjamas that don’t seem to quite fit. 

‘Here and there,’ she says, and with her trademark confidence she seems to make it sound like the best place in the world. ‘I’ll just disappear. Puff. A cloud of smoke.’ 

‘I don’t want you to disappear,’ he says. 

‘I’ll come back, Tim,’ she says, and there’s a sadness in her voice - a sense of the after they have barely discussed. After the baby. After, she’ll come back. ‘I promise,’ she says, fiercely. Her words hang in the air for a moment, until she says, ‘Now, young man, why couldn’t you sleep?’ and Tim rests her head on his shoulder. 

For a moment he thinks he might cry. For Trixie, or his mother. For himself. 

Trixie puts her arm around him. 

‘It’s ok, sweetie,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be okay for us both.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Alone in the house, Tim has to entertain a guest for Trixie - none other than Tom Herewood.


	8. Chapter 8

He wants to open up, tell her about the dreams - the nightmares, but he can’t. Men don’t talk about these things. They toughen up and get on with it. So that’s what Tim does. Brave face, just like Trixie. 

Every few days he helps her clean the cut on her hand. They sit at the kitchen table with all of the supplies laid out - like an operating theatre or doctors surgery, right there. It’s nothing complicated, just swab the wound with antiseptic and rebandage. Most days, Trixie gives a running commentary: this is because of x, do that slowly sweetie so it doesn’t sting. 

But one morning, as he’s dabbing the antiseptic onto the swab, she offers her hand and doesn’t say anything. She is watching him, eyes focused on the way he fumbles with the bandage and reveals the cut. It’s healing, slowly, but it’s starting to look better. It’s still red, but less ferociously, and the light pink dullness of a scar seems to be coming into effect. 

‘Why aren’t you instructing me?’ he asks, reaching forward and resting his fingers on the palm of her hand. He delicately starts to clean the wound. If Trixie winces she doesn’t show it. Instead, there’s a beaming smile on her face, and her eyes have a conspiratorial edge. She raises a single eyebrow. 

‘You know how to do it by now, sweetie. You’re a quick learner.’ 

He gently rolls the antiseptic across her hand and leans across the table to gather the bandages and the safety pins. Trixie is still looking at him. He starts to unwind the bandage. 

‘Are you studying medicine in September?’ she asks softly, handing him the medical scissors. He takes them and focuses on cutting the gauze strips. Once the task has been completed, he puts the scissors down and looks up. 

‘No,’ he says. He seems to have surprised her. 

‘Oh,’ she says, and she nods her head certainly, ‘you would make a glorious doctor though.’ A moment passes and Tim presses the gauze against her skin. He knows it must hurt - the skin is still somewhat raw, nerve endings frayed - but she just shakes her head a little. He wonders why she has such a tolerance for pain, but dismisses the answer. Some things are better not known. 

‘What are you studying?’ she asks as he begins to wrap her hand tightly. Tim concentrates on her hand and not her face. There’s some odd part of him that doesn’t want to disappoint her. 

‘Psychology,’ he says. Trixie’s face splits open in a smile. 

‘Now, that sounds just about perfect,’ she says. ‘People are ever so interesting.’ 

He wants to say, you’re interesting, but he thinks it sounds creepy. But his point is sound - there’s so much about Trixie Franklin that defies reason and assumption. He thinks, even at this early stage, that he might particularly study the psychology of family. His is patchwork, made up of so many well loved pieces, rebuilt from broken bits and ashes, from long lost memories and far away dreams. There’s a way that Trixie talks sometimes, or doesn’t talk, that makes him think her family is the same. Tim still remembers the never talked about brother. 

He secures the bandage and rests Trixie’s hand back on the table. They sit for a moment, across from each other, and they both have their questions but neither ask. Their futures are surprising, unwalked, unthought of paths. They’re both on their way out of Poplar, but for such different reasons. 

‘I’m going out this morning,’ Trixie says. ‘I’ve got some letters to post. Do we need more milk?’ and the moment is broken. Back to their busy, unspoken lives. 

Tim is reading the information leaflet Durham university sent him in the post. It’s about the structure of his accomodation halls. He’s read the first paragraph six times: the information about shared rooms and non shared rooms, the difference between catered and not. It seems too much for him to take in at a time like this. 

He’s saved from the indeterminate hell of the leaflet by the doorbell. He assumes that it’s Trixie, having forgotten the spare key, so he pulls the door open off guard. But it’s certainly not her. It is not even a woman, a Nonnatus nurse with a cake tin or medical supplies. It is someone that Tim recognises, though. 

‘I thought you were out of the country?’ Tim blurts before he can get his thoughts straight. On the doorstep, Tom Herewood tugs at the collar of his shirt and hops from foot to foot. He’s holding an open envelope in his hands, so tight his knuckles have gone white. 

‘Is Trixie in?’ he asks. 

‘She’s just gone to the shop for some milk,’ Tim says, before adding, ‘Would you like to come in and wait for her?’ 

So that’s how Poplar’s former curate ends up sitting at the kitchen table, an undrunk cup of tea in front of him. 

‘I went to Nonnatus,’ Mr Herewood says as Tim offers him a garibaldi, ‘but they said she was here. Is Doctor Turner at work?’

‘No. It’s just me and Trixie.’ 

Mr Herewood hastily eats the biscuit. The open letter sits abandoned to the right. From here, Tim recognises Trixie’s writing. He wonders if this is the letter she sent just after she arrived. In the end, he decides it’s not been long enough. Mr Herewood notices him looking at the letter and picks it up.   
‘Trixie wrote to me,’ he says, waving it through the air for effect, ‘back at the end of April. I’ve only just arrived in London.’ 

April. Three months ago. She must have known she was pregnant by then, and it’s that news which has summoned Tom Herewood across the globe. A man of God, here to help the sinner - the girl who used to be his, all that time ago. Tim wonders if that makes this better or worse. 

‘Does she know you’re coming?’ he asks. Mr Herewood is staring forlornly into his cup of tea. He mustn’t have been back to London since Barbara’s funeral, years ago. Tim remembers something his father said to him, when they left the old house and moved here - it’s not the place that holds the memories, but the people. But now, looking at Mr Herewood across the table, Tim wonders how true that is. It looks like London is a ghost town for him. 

‘Yes and no,’ the curate says. ‘I wrote a letter telling her, but I’m not sure it arrived.’ 

She certainly didn’t tell Tim that they were expecting a guest. 

‘How are you holding up?’ Mr Herewood asks, shaking the gloom that had been hanging over him. It’s like flicking a switch, playing a part. 

They fall into an easy conversation; talking about school and exams - about how Poplar has changed since Mr Herewood was last here. They sidestep the elephants in the room: Trixie and Barbara shaped, with little mistake. But their presence is felt, even though it is not said. Mr Herewood still sees much of Mr Gilbert, Barbara’s father, and talks at length about the mission center they work out of in Guinea. 

It has been years since Tim heard anyone say the name Barbara Gilbert and it seems the re-emergence of a long put away ghost. It is new life that has drawn Mr Herewood here, Trixie’s baby, but it is death that lingers. Ghosts cast long shadows, of course Tim knows that. He remembers his dreams about his mother well enough. 

They talk until they hear the rattle of a key in the lock. Tim has explained that his parents are away on holiday, while Mr Herewood has admitted that he’s only in Poplar for a week before he heads to a new mission in Liverpool, where Barbara’s father is moving now he is getting older. A pair, Mr Herewood and Mr Gilbert. The wrong pair but a pair all the same. 

The door falls open and Trixie stands, framed in the glorious summer sun. Her hand is still on the handle, as if she can’t quite take the shock. 

‘Oh my,’ she says, ‘what a surprise!’ 

She almost manages to hide the break in her voice as she speaks. Almost. 

Tim decides to give them space. He rescues his beaten up bike from the garage and cycles off just as the kettle starts to boil on the hob. It’s not his place and they deserve their privacy. 

At first he doesn’t know where he’s going. He weaves out of the estate, down the main road that would take him to Nonnatus. There’s a part of him that wants to seek Nurses Crane or Dyer, maybe even Nurse Anderson and her mysterious Cyril. But they’re probably hard at work helping babies come into the world. They don’t have time to counsel a seventeen year old who’s confused and sleep deprived and with a hole in his chest he can’t seem to fill. 

He finds the bike controlled by another force, another part of his brain that overrides and over-rules. He skips over the main road, swings down past the docks. Tim cycles fast even though his legs hurt, though they do that a lot. The one side effect from the polio that hasn’t left him. He can walk fine, run and keep up with the boys mostly, but sometimes there’s the pain, the tiredness. Sometimes his body just wants to give up. Tim’s got good at pushing through and past, at keeping going. 

He goes from the cobbles into the trees, covered from the midday sun by their canopy. Tim leaves his bike in the shade and does the rest by foot. The graveyard stretches out before him, headstone after headstone. So far into the distance that it blurs with the sun. 

Two places, that’s what he’s searching for. The first is easy to find, well maintained with daisies, and other summer flowers. Barbara Herewood’s grave, so neat and tidy and small. It seems so silent, seems to defy the life that once was. He kneels by the headstone, overwhelmed with the urge to say something - to pray or wish or just say, I hope you’re okay, because it seems too long ago that Barbara was actually here. 

Nobody talks about it. But then, in Tim’s experience - much too much for someone so young - people don’t tend to talk of the dead. 

Once he has paid respects to Barbara, he moves forward into the graveyard, deeper into the trees. At first, he is worried that he won’t be able to find it because it’s been a while since he’s visited, but it comes to him naturally enough the closer he gets. 

It emerges from the sun, shining marble in the bright light. The well loved Marriane Turner. When he is at his mother’s grave, he reaches out to touch the headstone as if he is reaching out to touch her. He remembers, just, the way she felt, the way she sounded and smelled. Tim sinks to his knees and holds on. 

He doesn’t much think talking to the dead actually does anything, but with his mother he has always tried. The rational part of him says that it’s such a childish, stupid thing, but his heart - the part of him that was her son, that always feels it is worth the effort. 

His forehead is against the stone and it’s cool against his skin, which is still hot from cycling. Tim takes a deep breath. 

‘Mum,’ he says. ‘Mum, what do I do now?’ 

He waits for an answer that doesn’t come, and then he goes home. He still has mud on the knees of his trousers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: On his eighteenth birthday, Tim does something he’ll come to regret, while Trixie admits why she wrote to Tom.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet again, thanks to everyone who had taken time to read my fic! I get a real boost from any kind of interaction - kudos/comments :) If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see explored in the next few chaps let me know - more focus on Trixie or Tim or the background characters. 
> 
> I have a plan for it all, but it’s pretty basic, so we’ll see how it goes. 
> 
> Thanks again! And I hope you enjoy the chapter.

When Tim gets back to the house, Mr Herewood is gone. Trixie is smoking by the patio door, a light cardigan around her shoulders. She notices Tim come in but she doesn’t immediately turn around. 

He goes and stands beside her. The sun is halfway down the sky, orange dripping across the horizon like a melting candle. The smell of her perfume mixed with cigarette smoke has started to be familiar, something he expects with her. 

She looks across at him and notices the mud stains on his knees. 

‘Have you been somewhere exciting?’ she asks, and he hears the memory of tears in her voice. She braves a smile, eyes watery pools so deep he is scared to look into them. He cycled home so fast his heart is still beating double quick. He is unable to settle. He and Trixie make quiet the team, standing by the door as the night comes and the breeze stills. 

‘I went to see mum,’ he says. 

Trixie goes to say something, probably ‘I didn’t know she was back,’ but the words die in her throat as she reconsiders. She turns once again to his ruined trousers, the patches of earth that have clung to him. Trixie smokes her cigarette so short it must be burning her fingers. 

In the end, she doesn’t say anything, though he’s sure she’s realised where he’s been. His mother is a ghost at Nonnatus but she wasn’t once. Before - before Val and Lucille, Nurse Crane, before Sister Bernadette renounced her vows and fell in love with his father - then, Marriane Turner was known. She was known by all at that place. Known by Trixie Franklin. His mother was nursed by them, as she died. But he knows it was a long time ago. People change, places change. Memories fade. 

‘What happened with Mr Herewood?’ he asks, halfway up the stairs. He turns to face Trixie, who is sitting at the kitchen table with Vogue magazine. She stares at the pages for a beat longer and then looks up. He has stopped scrambling, but he is ready to escape at a moment’s notice if required. 

Trixie puts the magazine down on the table. She says, ‘I heard you two had a little chat, before I arrived,’ which is an excellent example of deflection. He laughs. 

‘I didn’t know he was coming.’ 

‘Neither did I!’ She’s laughing but there’s something in that. A sadness, under the surface, bubbling ever closer. Tim decides to watch what he says; this seems like it could be dangerous ground. He turns around so that he’s sitting on the staircase, his hands resting at his sides. He and Trixie are looking at each other across the gap. 

She says, ‘I wrote to him, you know, when I found out I was pregnant.’ Trixie has spoken little about the baby, and she can’t look at him as she speaks. Her head falls, as if weighed down by her secrets, by a shame she shouldn’t feel. ‘He was the very first person.’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘He is such a dear friend to me, Tim, even after everything. Not the kind of man who judges others.’ Trixie pauses but he senses she still has more to say so he keeps quiet. He clasps his hands together. She takes a breath, her conviction wavering. He is worried she might start crying. ‘I don’t know if you know this,’ she says, striving for normality, ‘but Tom was adopted when he was a baby.’ 

‘So you wanted to ask him about it?’ 

‘Yes. I want to know what I should do. I want to know what is right.’ 

She puts a hand to her stomach and rests it there. Trixie looks down at her baby, still so small and fragile, its life undecided - not unwanted, but perhaps misplaced. Tim feels infinitely sad for Trixie in that moment, for her search to find the right path seems littered with pain. There is an unenviable grief in her words that betrays a woman torn. 

‘What are you going to do?’ 

She laughs, sharp and without humour. ‘I don’t know.’ 

They wait. Their silences sit between them. Grief is insidious, easy to awaken and hard to put away. Today has been a day for shaking the silence, for a sudden settling of things that stay unsaid. There are questions - about babies and graveyards and mothers. 

Tim goes upstairs but he doesn’t sleep. He hears Trixie come up an hour or so later. But he can hear her, pacing up and down the carpet in the other room. She doesn’t sleep either. 

It’s his birthday the next day. He doesn’t tell Trixie and gets up early to hide the cards in his bedroom. He’s not sure why he does it. There’s just so much in him that doesn’t feel like celebrating. 

On the plus side, Trixie has returned to her bubbly, confident self. She spends his birthday morning preparing a leg of lamb for their dinner. Mr Herewood is coming over later, to offer more words of wisdom, as is Nurse Crane. There’ll be a guest list even though there’s no party. 

He thinks Sister Julienne may have remembered, but she has a busy schedule and is unlikely to pop on over when she’s got babies to deliver and the district rota to see to. His dad promised to call, but they still haven’t spoken since the announcement of the Oxford adventure and Tim doesn’t exactly feel like a lecture on his birthday. 

The day passes quickly. Tim turns his bike upside down on the patio and mends the pedals, worn out from yesterday's journey and their long stint in the garage. Trixie paints her nails and plays records and they slip into a comfortable domesticity. 

It is unlike any other birthday he has ever had. There is no fussing, no center of attention. It is his secret, and everyone else in his life always carries so many - when he himself carries others. It is an easy, burdenless thing, a game: something free and important that only he knows. 

In the mid-afternoon, around 3 or 4, he heads out with change for the bus. There’s a plan to go into town, to get some extra supplies for the house, some lemonade because stocks are running dangerously low. Trixie is brushing her hair, morphing back into the woman he used to know. He isn’t sure if it’s the right thing, if by pretending everything is normal will cause more pain, because it’s not normal. There’s a time limit on Trixie now, the clock counting down. She’s leaving when his parents come back, a swapping over, a disappearance. 

She says she will be the same when she comes back. They both know that it is a lie. 

He takes the 49 towards Nonnatus but hops off before he reaches the stop. Tim tells himself it’s for the walk, to clear his mind. But something has settled within him. He isn’t in the mood for Trixie’s dinner party, for making conversation with Mr Herewood and Nurse Crane, however well meaning they are. He just wants to say, ‘Why make Trixie go? Why not let her stay?’ and he hates the idea of biting his tongue. 

He has the leaflet from Durham University in his pocket, scrunched and probably unreadable. There was a plan, maybe just read it through and get a grasp of it - the life that will be his in just two short months. Eighteen today, but he doesn’t feel it. They say you should feel invincible the day you turn eighteen. An adult, real and ready to face the world. 

But Tim has already grown up. He did it a long time ago, when his mother was dying, when he watched her go. He got old then, in that single moment, and time has been catching up all these years. And he’s still not ready. He wasn’t prepared to say goodbye to his mother and he’s not ready to leave Poplar. Tim doesn’t want to leave her again. 

He finds himself on the steps up to the Black Sail, drunk men staggering past him and the call of the docks filtering through. He pushes the door and walks in. One drink. This will be his celebration. His dad promised him a swift half today, but he’s not here. He asked for it, the day to himself - his family off parading around Bristol. Tim wanted this silence and now he’s got it. 

At first, the girl behind the bar doesn’t look too impressed, but Tim insists. Eighteen today, he says. She gives in, fills the beer up and hands it over. Tim spills it as he heads over to a quiet corner table. He’s drunk alcohol before, with dad, with boys at school or at gigs, but this is supposed to be it. This is the moment, they say, the moment you become a man. 

He stays in the Black Sail long enough that the dock workers start flooding in after shift’s end. Tim is pushed shoulder to shoulder with them, in between their drunken ramblings and their shouting. In the corner, they mainly leave him alone. He drinks another beer, then a third. He holds them tight in his hand and knows that he’s missed the dinner, hasn’t brought Trixie anything she asked for. 

Failing, falling. For once in his life he’s hitting back, doing something nobody expected of him. His chest bursts with it, an irrational feeling of anger that he beats down with the beer. It makes him sad, it makes him think of his mother and his father. It makes him think of Barbara Gilbert, who was the sort of kind that should’ve lived forever. 

He’s got his eyes shut when they burst into the bar. But their voices drift above the rabble. It’s Nurse Crane who first stumbles into view, pushing the punters apart like she’s parting the Red Sea. And she’s reaching out and he feels, finally, that he’s invincible. But he wants to go home. He wants to go home. 

He wants to cry. 

Nurse Crane leads him out of the bar. She tells him that one of Val Dyer’s cousins, the girl from behind the bar, recognised him and called Nonnatus House out of worry, just checking up. Outside he breathes the cool July air and tries to get his bearings. He wanted to be a man. A real man. And here he is. His head is spinning. 

Unsurprisingly, Trixie is in the front passenger seat. Tim climbs into the back and Nurse Crane sparks up the engine. Nobody says anything. 

Later, he and Trixie are alone. They’re sitting on opposite ends of the sofa. Nurse Crane dropped them off and then made her excuses, talking with Trixie as Tim wandered back towards the front door. 

He’s sobering up, bit by bit. It was only beer. The boys at school would call him a lightweight. The feeling of rebellion has faded and now he just feels stupid. Stupid and tired and sick with it all. 

Trixie reaches forward towards him. He’s worried she’s going to explode with anger. His dad surely would. But she dusts down his jacket and holds him softly by the lapels. She looks like she’s upset. 

‘Happy birthday,’ she says, quietly. 

‘How do you know?’ 

‘Your father called.’ 

They lapse into silence. She’s still holding on to his jacket, as if she might, if the moment takes her, shake sense back into him. Trixie is looking at the beaten up leather like it holds the entire secrets of the world. 

‘Why didn’t you say where you were going? We were scared sick, sweetie.’

He missed the dinner. Mr Herewood and Nurse Crane went searching for him and then Val called, with the tip from her cousin, and the saviour team was sent out. The food has gone uneaten, ruined. The guests have fled. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. And he rests his head on her shoulder. He was scared, that’s why. He can’t tell Trixie that. She’s so strong, much stronger than he is. Boys - no, men - like Tim, they aren’t supposed to be scared like this. 

‘It won’t fix it, Tim,’ she says. ‘The drink, it won’t.’ 

‘Fix what?’ 

They pull apart and Trixie taps at his chest. ‘This,’ she says. ‘whatever hurts here. It won’t help.’ Her voice is as honest as he’s ever heard it. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie,’ she says. Trixie is smiling and she’s crying and he is too. ‘We’ll get through this.’ 

He nods. There’s something remarkable about Trixie Franklin, because he believes her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Trixie and Tim have a picnic in Hyde Park. While there, Trixie decides to tell Tim about childhood.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to everyone reading and a big thanks to anyone who comments/kudos - it’s very much appreciated.
> 
> This chapter has a bit of backstory for Trixie that I’ve been think about for a while. It’s crazy that she’s been in the show so long and that we know so little about her! I’ve tried to fit it around canon but I couldn’t find a concrete age for her so I guessed - if someone notices that I’ve missed something let me know! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy :)

He and Trixie don’t talk about it again - not the drinking, or her reaction to it. It sits between them, unsaid. Tim climbs up to bed and leaves her, and the evening, behind. 

The next day, she’s bright and bouncing and smiling. Standing at the kitchen table she sees cut out from a magazine, picture perfect. He knows she’s making up for something, trying to make him feel at ease. 

‘I was thinking we could go out today,’ she says, but she’s not quite looking him in the eye anymore. ‘The park?’ 

Tim shrugs. He’s got a headache and his behaviour has made him feel sheepish and out of place. But Trixie’s smiling, she’s happy, and that has an effect on his mood. She lifts him, just by being positive. They’ve both been so down, so in the dark, that it’s nice to see the sun after all this time. 

‘The park?’ he says, coming towards her across the kitchen. ‘Sounds nice.’ 

They pack a picnic. Sandwiches, cold lemonade, chocolate biscuits. They forget the anger, the clouds of upset that threaten to gather. They are just Tim and Trixie, and they’re trying their very best just to be happy. 

The 52 bus takes them across the city. Trixie insists they sit at the top, right near the front, so they can see the sights. Tim’s lived in London all his life, but he’s never really stopped to look - to really look at the city. They pass through the streets and he sees it through Trixie’s eyes, a girl who hasn’t always belonged. 

‘When I first came here,’ she says, the picnic basket on her lap, her hands neatly folded over one another, ‘I was overwhelmed with it all, with how busy it was. It didn’t seem real.’ 

The cut on her hand is still healing, a vicious gash she hides from view. He wishes it didn’t hurt her.

He wants to ask her where she’s from, but she’s staring out the window with such intensity that he feels he shouldn’t disturb her. Tim just watches the streets pass, the landmarks and the tourist destinations and thinks, it is his home but it hasn’t always been hers. 

They reach Hyde Park at one o’clock and wander down the leafy paths to nowhere. Tim holds the picnic basket, while Trixie floats through the afternoon haze. It’s hot out, the July heat settling over them with a familiar heaviness. They gravitate down to the river, the south bank of the Serpentine, near the Lido packed with guests. 

Trixie picks a spot and lays a checkered blanket down on the grass. The pair sit together, right down near the river, so close they can hear the sound of the current against the bank. They are shaded by a tree, away from the busy path, hidden, pushed away. Unseen, it is like they are in their own silence, their own part of the world. 

Tim watches Trixie as she unpacks the sandwiches. She relaxes now they are out of the glare of the sun and passersby. She is worried, he thinks, that they can see the bump, the give away that she is pregnant. But now, it’s just the two of them and she doesn’t have to hide. He wants to tell her that, to say, ‘Trixie, be yourself,’ but it’s not his place. 

The sun rises ever higher in the sky above them. It catches in the trees and bathes them in an amber glow. Tim has been to Hyde Park once before, when he was little, when his mother was still alive. 

They came to watch the boats on the river, he can’t remember why now - but he can see it as he did then: the clear blue of the sky, the way his mother said, ‘Timothy, Timothy look,’ and he doesn’t know what he was looking at except her: his mother, cut out against the clouds, above, floating that way Trixie does these days. He can imagine his mother now, sitting right beside them. It is almost real. 

It’s just as nice today, picture postcard, but he’s not with his mother. He’s not even with dad, or his siblings. It’s Trixie Franklin who sits beside him in the summer sun. Trixie who is scared and is trying to hide it - from him, and from the rest of the world along with it. Trixie who talked last night about alcohol with the voice of someone who has struggled and fought back. 

Tim knows she didn’t sleep well last night, because he didn’t either - their twin footsteps pacing until the early hours. He wonders if he should’ve said something, instead of locking himself way in the darkness, annoyed at his own stupid behaviour. But there’s nothing to be done about it now.

Trixie hands him a cheese and onion sandwich, which he holds but does not eat. She’s looking at him, with her head turned to the side. 

‘Tell me about your brother,’ he asks. He has wondered since Oxford but kept it to himself. And now, he’s been lost to the memories of his own family, he turns his attention to hers. At first he thinks she won’t answer. She raises a dismissive hand and waves it through the air. She drops her gaze, focusing on the grass, on anything but him. 

Trixie straightens the edge of the picnic blanket, calming herself. Then she finally looks up. 

‘His name was Michael,’ she says. Her voice is wistful, far off. As if she’s not really talking to him, to Tim, but to someone else - someone who is not here, who hasn’t been here for a long time. 

Michael, she tells him, was older. Ten years. He was fierce, a fighter, never took nothing lying down. Trixie speaks of her brother in the past tense; he is lost to her. She hasn’t seen him for over twenty years. 

Trixie tells him Michael’s story. It is her story too. She hasn’t told it to anyone in a long time. 

She was born in ‘34, was five years old when the war started. At fifteen, her brother already wanted to fight, to prove himself for the country. But daddy, daddy was sad and he was sick and he was angry. He’d fought one war and here was another - here to dredge up the memories, the nightmares. 

Michael would read her bedtime stories because dad was asleep and mum was on shift sound at the steelworks. He would sit with her when she was scared of the dark and tell her there was nothing to be afraid of. Michael was out of place, but he belonged with her on those evenings, when it was just the two of them and nobody ever cried, because he had that way of his, that always made her feel safe.

The bombs started to fall. Michael and her father had a war between them, just like the world around them. Trixie was a child, she couldn’t do anything, and her mother - sweet and scared, did nothing either. They just watched it unfold. Trixie was five, six, seven. Daddy got worse, Michael got angry. 

Trixie learnt how to make people laugh. She would sing and dance and for a bit, her father wouldn’t go for the bottle, he’d smile; maybe the nightmares would stop, just for a little while. She’d try to help Michael, but he already had one foot out the door. 

And then Michael left. There was a hole where he’d been, and mum never recovered from that. Her best boy, her only son, had run off to the kind of war that had destroyed his father. 

The world was dying, and Trixie was getting older. She listened to her mother crying and her father screaming and she smiled through it all, because that was what a good daughter was supposed to do. 

When the war ended, Michael didn’t come back. They didn’t even know if he’d survived. Trixie was eleven years old. There were parties, so many - streetfulls - but in the Franklin house nobody felt much like celebrating. They kept waiting on Michael, waiting and waiting. Trixie still looks for him, sometimes, in the street. 

When she was fifteen, in the winter of ‘49, mum got sick and didn’t make it to Christmas. And then it was just her and dad, but he wasn’t much of a father anymore. Yet, she could still make him laugh, smile, however fleetingly. 

‘And then,’ she says, across the picnic blanket, quiet, ‘he died, just before I moved to London.’ 

Tim holds his breath for a moment, thinking - thinking, oh Trixie, how do you still smile and mean it? But he doesn’t say that. He says, ‘I’m sorry,’ and she reaches out and puts her hand on his arm. 

They have abandoned the picnic. It didn’t seem right, somehow, when they were talking about all that history. Tim was born after the war, he cannot imagine what it was like - and for some reason, it seemed easy to think that Trixie hadn’t known it either. But she is older, she is marked by it in ways you can’t see. 

‘Don’t you want to find him?’ Tim asks. ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to Michael?’ 

Trixie takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve been alone a long time,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter all that much anymore.’

She is lying. He knows, and so does she. But he doesn’t point it out. He lets the lie rest between them, because it’d be much better if it were truth. There’s no point pulling it apart, now. 

‘And what about you?’ she asks, looking at him, trying to leave her past in the shade. 

‘What about me?’ 

‘Your mother. Do you want to talk about her?’ 

For a moment, Tim doesn’t say anything. But Trixie is looking right at him, and his chest is tight and he wonders if this is how she feels - how she has always felt. 

‘People don’t remember her,’ he says. 

‘I do.’ 

Tim remembers what it was like when his mother died. Nurses everywhere, his father in silent contemplation in the living room. He had been so small, had hidden himself away from the whispers and the tears, from the hopelessness that they all felt. He hadn’t wanted to understand, but he had, no matter how hard he tried to hide. 

And Trixie Franklin was there, she had floated and flounced and smiled. She had taken the hand of the little boy in that kitchen and she did what she had done since she was a little girl. She had smiled and said, ‘It’s ok, it’s going to be ok,’ and she was talking to Tim. He hasn’t thought of that day at all recently. He had almost forgotten that Trixie had been there at all. 

‘I’m scared,’ he says. ‘I’m scared of leaving Poplar.’ 

Trixie is smiling but she is sad, too. She is nearly crying. ‘I’m scared too,’ she says. She squeezes his hand. ‘We can do it together, can’t we?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: After a domestic incident, Fred is called to the Turner house. Meanwhile, Tim realises that his family’s trip to Bristol has got something to do with Trixie.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any feedback on this chapter would be greatly appreciated :)

The boiler packs up when they get back from the picnic. There’s no hot water, no heating. The latter isn’t much of a problem - given it’s high summer and the windows are already thrown open. But the former presents a problem Tim doesn’t know how to fix. 

He attacks the boiler with a wrench he finds in the cupboard under the stairs. He flashes a confident smile at Trixie and says, ‘I’ll have it fixed in no time,’ but she’s already laughing, and so is he and they know, even before he gets within two feet of the metal contraption, that there’s no chance at all that he’ll be able to sort the problem. 

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ Trixie says. She is sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, a scarf around her shoulders. Gone are the tears they nearly cried in Hyde Park - back is the Trixie everyone knows and loves. But there are lines around her eyes, a tiredness in her that he hasn’t seen before. She can seem to shake it these days. 

Tim sits beside her. The patio doors are thrown open and a gentle breeze finds its way to him. He’s frustrated, because he’s been playing the role of an adult and this is a failure. This something breaking and he doesn’t know how to fix it; he doesn’t even know what to do next. 

Trixie loops her arm through his, and pulls him closer. What a day they’ve had, ‘eh, the two of them. All those secrets that nobody else knows, all those fears they’ve kept and kept and now they’re at bursting point. 

‘I think this calls for chocolate biscuits,’ Trixie announces, throwing him a wild grin. ‘And a cup of tea. How does that sound Timothy?’ 

He’s smiling, despite himself, despite everything. Trixie has that effect of you - and even though he knows it’s an act, a facade or front - she can still smile and make you smile too. It’s something she’s too good at and now he knows why; Trixie has been trying to make the world right since she was too young to understand what ‘right’ really meant. It’s an art form, a skill learned and never forgotten. All those years of relentless positivity, the pretending, it’s going to catch up one of these days. 

Tim searches for the biscuits, high and low, while Trixie is put in charge of the kettle. They have put the radio on, because it’s hard - so hard - to cry when you’re singing. He’s never much liked dancing, but Trixie sways to the beat and so does he. He forgets the childish embarrassment that has always afflicted him, since the braces and polio, since his legs wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do. He forgets. He dances, too. 

They put the biscuits on a plate, right next to the tea, and they crowd round the table, like two conspirators in some secret project. And that’s what they are, really, cut off from his family - from hers at Nonnatus. Tim and Trixie, apart from the whole, their summer separated by secrets and fears and forced by his father, who always wants to do the best; for his patients, his family. 

Trixie talks about her training, in Birmingham, when she was young and away from home for the first time. She speaks softly, without her usual embellishments and dramatics. She is telling him this because he’s scared of leaving Poplar. She spins tales of the dormitory she stayed in, with six other women she has lost track of. Of the matrons and the lessons and the hospitals. She says, ‘I was happy there, you’ll be happy too.’ 

Tim isn’t going off to Nursing school in Birmingham, but the principle's the same. He hasn’t really been able to talk about these things with anyone else - everybody else at school had that bravado, the excitement, like they knew - somehow - down to their very center, that university was going to be the best time of their lives. They didn’t have time for people like Tim, who are afraid of getting out of this city, of trying to belong anywhere other than these streets and this place that has always been in his blood. 

They have eaten the biscuits, now. Trixie turns to face him across the fading summer light of the kitchen. ‘Why don’t we call Fred?’ she says, and there’s a resigned note in her voice. ‘He always knows how to get you out of jam.’ 

Trixie telephones. It’s after eight, so they’re not sure if Fred’s even free to come and help, but it’s better than nothing. Tim makes them both sandwiches, unable to face having to cook at this late hour. 

He listens to Trixie’s back and forth. At first, it’s Violet who answers. 

‘Yes, I understand he might be busy,’ Trixie says, tapping her fingers against the telephone table, ‘but could I just have a quick word?’ 

Violet Buckle says something, and Trixie nods in time to the words. 

‘I’ll take no time at all,’ she says, and there’s a confidence to her voice that she seems to have lost in the last few days. The baby has made her uncertain, has changed her down to her very centre. But here’s the Trixie they all remember, sweetness and a smile, driven and sure. 

In the end, Fred is put on the line, and Trixie explains the situation. There’s a few technical details that require Tim to stand by the boiler and shout about valves and buttons and dials, but even if he thinks he knows what the problem is, Fred can’t come until morning. 

So Tim and Trixie head to bed with the boiler still kaputt. On the landing, they seem reluctant to part. He hovers by his bedroom door, but it’s Trixie who speaks. 

‘Promise me,’ she says, ‘that you’ll call your father in the morning.’ 

He nods his head. He hasn’t spoken to dad since before his birthday, since before he got drunk and disappointed everyone. But Trixie’s right. The boiler is something his parents need to know about, because Tim’s got saving’s but he didn’t exactly dream of spending them on boiler parts this summer. 

‘Yeah, ok. Maybe,’ he says. Trixie laughs, and then disappears into her bedroom. Tim’s left on the landing and it’s quiet, too quiet, because he can’t even hear the sound of the hot water pipes in the walls. 

Fred wakes them up. Bright and early, roused from bed by some heavy duty knocking that’s probably going to have neighbourhood watching ringing the police any minute. 

‘I heard you’ve got problems,’ Fred says, on the doorstep. Tim’s in his pyjamas. Trixie’s hiding by the stairs, still in her nightclothes. 

He leads Fred to the boiler cupboard. ‘So how have you been faring, Mr Turner?’ he asks, starting his examination with a screwdriver held aloft in one hand. 

‘Fine. Fine, yeah.’ 

‘And Nurse Franklin?’ Fred asks, attacking the boiler with a loud clang. Trixie’s fate sits between them. It’s in the way Fred speaks, a little hesitance in his voice. Tim wondered how far the secret had got, and now he knows it’s reached Fred, at least. 

‘She’s ok,’ is all that Tim can say. 

Fred looks over, out the corner of his eye, and raises an eyebrow. ‘She’s told you-’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I thought-’

‘I’m not a child.’ 

‘And I’m not treating ya like one,’ Fred says, reaching back down to his tool box. Tim knows what he wants to ask. It seems easier to ask Fred than it’s been before - with the other Nurses, they seemed too close to Trixie, and Tom Herewood was still so caught by his grief. Fred’s the first chance he’s had. 

‘Do you know what happened?’ he asks. 

At first, Fred focuses on the boiler. Fred Buckle isn’t a man for gossip but that’s not what this is. Tim is drawn into this now, a part of a machine he’s not sure he truly understands. He has known Fred a long, long time; he is as much a part of Poplar as the cobbles, as the twisted roads and streets. 

‘It’s a terrible business, really,’ Fred says. He still won’t look round. Tim, wearing pajamas as the summer sun strains through the window, rocks on the balls of his bare feet, unsure. They can hear Trixie, creaking the floorboards upstairs. 

‘Why did they make her leave Nonnatus?’ 

‘The Sisters had no choice.’ Fred shrugs, like it’s easy - like kicking Trixie out makes sense. But he won’t look at Tim and there’s a frown on his face. Not so easy, then. 

‘I’m sure Trixie just made a mistake,’ Tim says. He’s so sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. 

‘Mistakes like these have a way of staying with you.’ 

‘It shouldn’t matter.’ 

‘But it does. And what’s happened has happened, Tim. That’s the truth of it. Too late to go back now.’

Fred turns to the boiler in earnest. Tim knows the conversation is over. They’re not going to stand here, over the broken metal and odd whirring noises, and discuss the morals of the matter. Fred’s right. It’s happened, for better or worse. This is where Trixie has found herself. 

Tim wanders away from the boiler. He catches a glimpse of Trixie at the top of the stairs, and he’s not sure how long she's been there. It’s not something he wants to overthink. So instead of facing Trixie, like he should, he makes a B-line for the telephone. 

Picking up the scrap of paper with the number on, he dials Bristol. It rings and rings. Eventually, after a short lived conversation with the receptionist, he’s put through to his parents room. It’s mum who answers. 

‘Yes?’ she says. Her voice seems to belong to something very far off to Tim right now - something long ago. He holds on to it tight.

‘It’s me,’ he says. 

‘Timothy!’ she says. He swears he can see her smiling, just from the sound of her voice. ‘I hope you had a wonderful birthday?’ 

They talk a little about it - but mum doesn’t bring up the drinking, and he’s grateful. Instead, she regales him with tales of his siblings and their adventure to Bristol arcade. 

‘It’s not long until we come back, now,’ mum says. Tim looks at the calendar above the telephone, pinned to the wall. A week now. Not long at all. ‘Have you got everything straight like you wanted?’ 

‘Nearly,’ he says. He’s not sure how true that is, but he says it with enough gusto that mum believes it. 

‘That’s good,’ she says, but she’s interrupted by something Tim can’t see. Her voice is quiet, as if she’s holding the phone away from her mouth. She’s talking to someone else, and Tim’s pretty sure - that despite the mumbling - that it’s his dad. 

Lo and behold, when mum comes back on the line, she says, ‘Your father wants a word with Trixie, is she there?’ 

‘Why does he want to talk to her?’ Tim says. It doesn’t immediately make sense to him. Maybe he wants to check up on her, on account of the baby. 

‘Can you please just get her,’ mum says. ‘If she’s there, of course.’ 

Tim calls Trixie and when she arrives, he hands her the receiver with a little explanation as to who’s waiting on the other end of the line. Tim tries to make himself scarce. He sits at the top of the stairs, but he can still hear her - can hear Fred banging around with the boiler too. Trixie is talking about how she’s feeling, and it’s clear that either she or someone else has told Tim’s dad about the fall and the cut hand, because they’re discussing that too. 

Trixie suddenly changes her demeanor. She paces into sight and then away again. ‘Mr Dockerill is not important,’ she suddenly says, sharp like a crack of thunder. ‘Dr Turner, please,’ she adds, after a momentary pause. 

Mr Dockerill. The Dentist. Tim thought he was long gone. Maybe he was wrong about that. Is that how this fits it - Mr Dockrill is the reason Trixie is in this trouble? Tim thought he was married. 

‘Is everything sorted, for when you get back?’ Trixie asks into the telephone. Her voice has softened now. Trixie listens to his father talk for a little long and then starts to explain about the boiler. By the time she’s finished, Tim’s not in the mood to talk to his parents again. They’re back soon. Everything can wait until then.

He hears the receiver click back into the place. Trixie appears at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Why didn’t you want to say goodbye?’ she asks. Tim shrugs. Trixie starts up the stairs towards him. She settles on a step a few below him, looking up. Below them, Fred is still fixing the boiler. 

‘How much of that did you hear?’ she asks. Her voice is quiet, held back. 

‘What did you mean when you asked if everything was sorted?’ 

‘Tim-’

‘No. No. It doesn’t matter,’ he says, backtracking. ‘It’s not my place.’ 

Trixie sighs. She reaches up and takes Tim’s hand. ‘Your father is helping me with the adoption,’ she says. At first, he’s confused, but it slowly dawns on him. Bristol. A holiday. His father doesn’t do holidays. ‘They’ve found some wonderful people, for the baby.’ 

‘In Bristol?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Maybe it makes sense, now. Why it was so easy to convince mum and dad to let him stay in Poplar, why the holiday appeared out of nowhere like a dream. Why Trixie showed up on his doorstep with no one saying anything first. All of it had been planned, prepared for. And nobody had bothered to tell Tim first. 

‘Is it what you want?’ Tim asks. Trixie looks up at him and has such wonder in her eyes. He’s not sure anybody has asked her what she wanted, in any of this. 

‘Oh Tim,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s the only thing for it, now.’ 

She turns away so he can’t tell that she is crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Things get tough as Tim and Trixie fight. Seeking information, Tim finds himself at Nonnatus house....


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to anyone still reading :) Sorry for the delay with this chapter, life's been pretty hectic recently.

Trixie busies herself in the aftermath. She makes a pot of tea, and spends her time making sure Fred has enough digestive biscuits to get him through the boiler repair. 

Tim stays at a distance. He takes a book and sits out on the patio, in the glorious summer sun. But he can’t concentrate. He tries not to, but he listens to Trixie and Fred talking in the house - their voices floating through the heat haze towards him. 

‘Are you sure you’re alright?’ Fred says, and his voice is unsure and unsteady - because this isn’t the kind of thing people like Fred usually talk about. 

‘Fantastic,’ Trixie says, and Tim can imagine her leaning on the door of the cupboard, arms tucked into herself, smiling in a way that doesn’t really reach her eyes. Tim remembers her at the park, when she wanted to cry but didn’t, because she said, ‘It was all such a long time ago,’ and she believed that meant it could no longer hurt. 

The conversation has moved on while Tim has been thinking. Fred’s voice cracks through the air, even though he’s trying to keep it quiet. Fred Buckle trying to whisper could probably be heard all the way round Poplar, truth be told. 

‘And what ‘bout him? The young fella?’ 

‘Tim?’ 

‘How’s he holding up with all of this? I expect he’s sick of it by now.’ 

Tim listens harder. They’re talking about him. He wonders what Trixie will say, if she knows he can hear the conversation. Tim looks studiously down at the book in his lap, suddenly aware that he doesn’t really want to know what Trixie says. They’ve become closer - friends, almost, or so he thought. Maybe it’s not the same for her; maybe he’s just an annoyance she’s had to put up with. Maybe all those walls and pretend, maybe they’re for Tim too. 

‘Tim’s been a rock, actually,’ Trixie says, and her voice is so certain - completely unwavering - that he holds onto that. His confidence, momentarily dented, returns. They are friends, despite everything - despite dad and mum and their little plans, despite the underhand tactics and the fact that nobody ever tells him anything. Trixie does, maybe not about the baby or Bristol or Mr Dockerill, but about brothers and mothers and pain that you smile too. He and Trixie have told each other secrets that they have not told other people. 

Trixie wafts into view at the patio doors. Tim looks up from the book in his lap, which is closed, and meets her eye. In that moment, he knows that she guessed he was listening. She smiles at him, and for a moment it is without sadness. 

‘He’s missing a part,’ she announces dramatically, leaning on the glass doors for effect. He laughs, and so does she. ‘Would you do me a wonderful favour, Tim, on that bike of yours?’ 

He sits up straighter in his chair. ‘Of course.’ The book, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, slips to the patio beneath him. 

Trixie asks him to go to Nonnatus. There’s a box of Fred’s things there, hidden in a back room - or perhaps it's in the shed, he’s not all too sure. But this missing part, it’s there somewhere, and they need it. 

So Tim, who’s shown a quickly drawn image of the offending connector rod, dusts his bike down and checks the gears. He’s out front, double checking the box which he’ll put the part on. He tugs at the ropes, and happy that they’re tight enough, climbs onto the bike. Just as he’s about to pull off and cycle away, he hears Fred’s voice lighter, full of concern, say something. It falls through the front window just as Tim reaches the end of the front path, not meant for him but for Trixie. 

‘Are you sure you’re not going to tell Mr Dock-’

Trixie’s voice cuts across, sharp, sudden, ‘Please, Fred. Don’t talk about all that. I’ve made my choice now.’

Tim pedals away fast. He’s got the feeling he shouldn’t have overheard a conversation like that. Trixie hasn’t told Mr Dockerill that she’s having a baby. There’s something infinitely upsetting about that, Tim decides. Something terribly, horribly, sad. 

He knows the route to Nonnatus with his eyes shut. So as he bumps and skids towards the house, he thinks about Trixie. He wonders what will happen to her baby, shipped off to Tim’s parents' friends in Bristol. At least it’s not one of those mother and baby homes, with the bulbs that don’t work, the frightening matrons, the code of silence. Trixie doesn’t belong to a place like that. 

Tim wonders what will happen to her. To Trixie, after. She says she’ll come back, but he can’t see how she’ll just slip back in once all of it is over. He can’t imagine how she’ll just forget the baby - but an army of women before her have done the same. So maybe she’ll carry a little more sadness, in the shape of an unused blanket, but she already holds so much within herself. 

He turns on to the Commercial Road. Cycling at him in the distance is Val Dyer, dressed in her nurse’s uniform. She stops at the side of the road and waves him down. 

Out of breath, she says, ‘How are you and Trixie doing?’ They talk a little of the accident, how Trixie’s cut is recovering. 

‘You’re turning into your father,’ Val says, when Tim tells her how he’s been rebandaging the wound. Val laughs, a grin a mile wide on her face. Tim turns his gaze to the pavement, shaking his head. 

‘It’s nothing,’ he says, waving his hand through the air. She puts her hand on his shoulder and then remounts her bicycle. 

‘Well, young man, I’ve got District rounds to get too. Sister Julienne will have my guts for garters if I don’t hurry up.’ 

A thought comes into his head, a question he wants the answer too. Is Val Dyer the woman for it? Tim kicks his feet against the pedals as he thinks. She’s about to push off, so Tim takes a step forward. 

‘About Trixie,’ he starts, hesitantly. Val slows down and looks over her shoulder. ‘Will she really have to go away?’ 

Val Dyer climbs off her bike and walks over to Tim. They’re by the side of the road, hidden in the shade of a building as the midday sun beats down on their backs. Val looks concerned, and he senses that this isn’t a conversation she really wants to have. 

‘Tim, look,’ she starts, ‘it’s all very complicated.’ 

‘It doesn’t seem like it to me.’ 

‘Trixie has to make her own choices about it.’ 

‘Even if that means going away?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

They stand for a moment, close yet they feel so very far apart. There are things Tim wants to say, but knows he must hold his tongue. Val keeps looking at him and then turning away, as if she too is caught by what they have to say, what they must. Tim wants to ask about Mr Dockerill, about why Trixie is hiding away at the house, why any of this has happened in the first place. But it is not his place, it won’t ever be his place. Trixie will leave, she’ll go and then it’ll be a memory to Tim, and it’ll feel more like a dream then. 

‘Thank you for looking out for her,’ Val Dyer says. She pushes the bicycle back into the street, signalling her need to get away. The patients of Poplar await her, and Tim knows she can’t stay here and discuss the details of Trixie’s trouble right here and now. 

Tim shrugs. He’s protective of Trixie now, can’t imagine not looking out for her. He knows his understanding of the situation is flawed, that there are things people are keeping from him - people like his own parents, like Val Dyer when she looks and then looks away. Things about Mr Dockerill and Bristol, about thinking Trixie has a choice at all. 

Val Dyers swings off down the road, trailing her cape and confusion along with it. Tim watches after her for a long while, trying to decide what it is she won’t say to him. Maybe it’s living with the nuns, he thinks, with all that silence - all those rules and obeying. Maybe it rubs off. 

Tim pushes his bike the rest of the way to Nonnatus House. The sun is so hot it feels like it’s burning holes into his back. He notices Sister Frances at the bike rack, strapping her medical bag into position. She waves at him as she pedals away. The place is busy, children running riot, adults grouped together chatting loudly. But when Tim knocks on the front door, he’s met with the calm of the house. 

The door falls open, and Tim’s met with a cool breeze and a quiet that he’s never been able to find anywhere else. Sister Monica Joan is standing in front of him. 

‘I have many biscuits that need eating,’ she says, reaching out to take his hands in hers, ‘You’re the perfect young man to help me. It won’t be easy.’ 

Sister Monica Joan leads him into the building, even as Tim splutters something along the lines of ‘Fred, boiler, I need.’ She takes him to the kitchen, where a plate of custard creams sits, pride of place on the table. The house is so silent that Tim isn’t sure there’s anyone else even here - they must be out, seeing to Poplar’s needy and hurt. So it’s just him and Sister Monica Joan. And sixty three custard creams. 

Tim takes one. The Sister is holding one already, holding it up in the air. 

‘And what brings you here on such a day as this?’ she says, eyes like hawks trained on him. Tim shuffles in his seat. 

‘It’s the boiler, at home. I’m helping Fred find a missing piece.’ 

Sister Monica Joan seems to consider this statement carefully, as she eats the custard cream. Tim knows that his journey to fixing the boiler won’t be quite as quick or easy as he thought. It’s hard to leave Sister Monica Joan when she’s in this mood, her grip so sudden, her words so fervent. Tim eats a custard cream only to be offered another. 

Instead of eating another biscuit, he says, ‘I don’t really have time for custard creams.’ 

‘Nonsense. Everyone has time for biscuits young Mr Turner. Life is nothing without custard creams.’ 

‘It’s just,’ he says, uncertainly, ‘Fred and Trixie are-’

But Tim doesn’t finish, because something changes in Sister Monica Joan. Her eyes open wide and she drops the biscuit to the table. She turns to Tim with something close to wonder in her eyes. 

‘Nurse Franklin?’ she says, holding onto the name with vigour. ‘You know what has become of her?’ 

Tim opens his mouth and then closes it. Clearly, Trixie’s fate hasn’t been talked about much here - if at all. It must just be the Nuns, or maybe even just Sister Monica Joan, because Nurses’ Crane, Dyer and Anderson knew where Trixie has gone. Sister Monica Joan then. 

What harm can there be in telling her? She is leaning forward, expectantly, hands clasped together. 

‘She’s staying at my father’s house,’ he says, steadily. 

Sister Monica Joan goes to say something, but she stops and sinks back in her chair. Behind them, Tim can hear footsteps on the floorboards, getting closer, closer. He turns around, and sees Sister Julienne watching them. He wonders how long she has been there. 

There’s a moment, where the three of them are just looking at each other, unsure of what to say now. He can tell by the way Sister Julienne is watching them that she heard every word that’s been said. He remembers the way Trixie pretended that she hadn’t cried the last time they were here - when she talked to Sister Julienne and wouldn’t talk about it afterwards. Trixie, and her fate, is a touchy subject here. 

‘That’s enough, Timothy,’ Sister Julienne says, ‘we don’t want to upset Sister Monica Joan.’ 

But it’s too late. Sister Monica Joan stands up and shakes her head. 

‘I would like very much for Master Turner to tell me what happened.’ 

Tim looks between the two Nuns. He isn’t sure how he got into this mess. He also has no idea how to get out of it, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Trixie shows up at Nonnatus, and Tim finds himself part of an argument he's not sure he understands. Seeking refuge, he finds Phyllis and Sister Hilda, who both make revelations about Trixie. And still, Tim hasn't found that damn boiler part.


	13. Chapter 13

It’s a standoff, and Sister Monica Joan looks the least likely to back down. Tim hovers awkwardly between them, with his hands still in his pockets. Sister Julienne's face is soft, not angry, but her voice betrays a solid conviction that will be hard to sway. Tim senses a fight is nearing, but that it feels awfully sad too, as if everything is touched with confusion and forgetfulness. 

‘Tell me,’ Sister Monica Joan says, hands on hips, brandishing a custard cream like a weapon, eyes set and certain. Julienne shifts a little on her feet, hands clasped together, trying to decide what to say - if she needs to say anything at all. 

Tim stares at each in turn, mouth opening and closing. Trixie’s fate shouldn’t be a secret, right? He says that to himself, but he knows just from the look in the Sisters’ faces that it is. Maybe Tim is messing around in things he doesn’t understand? But throwing Trixie out, banishing her from the only place she’s called home in the last decade, that doesn’t sit right with him. 

‘Trixie’s been living with me,’ Tim says, and his voice is more confident than he anticipated. Sister Julienne steps forward instantly, towards Sister Monica Joan, who still doesn’t look at ease with the situation. 

‘I cannot understand it,’ Sister Monica Joan, ‘I try but I cannot. Why would we cast out one of our own?’ Her voice is quiet, questioning. It sounds so, terribly, sad to Tim. 

‘We did nothing of the kind,’ Sister Julienne says, trying to be pragmatic about it all. 

Tim pipes up with a ‘But-’ though he doesn’t go any further because Sister Julienne gives him a sideways glance which tells him to think better of it. He’s opened a can of worms now, and for better or worse the questions are being asked. He can’t say he’s not interested, and waits on tenterhooks for the nuns’ next words. 

‘There where did she go?’ comes Sister Monica Joan, dropping the biscuit like a bombshell. The custard cream shatters on the table top, and fragments of butter biscuit fly all over the place. Tim rushes to clear it up, while the Nuns stay staring at each other. While he’s on his knees, sweeping up pieces of custard cream, Sister Julienne reluctantly says, ‘She went to people who care about her-’

‘We care about her.’ Sister Monica Joan’s plea is sudden, certain, powerful. It leaves Sister Julienne unable to refute it. Monica Joan fiddles with the custard creams as Tim, hands full of the biscuit shrapnel, looks up at her. ‘They have all gone - these fancy, modern girls,’ Sister Monica Joan, ‘They are nothing but the wind, a passing presence - Nurses Lee, Noakes, Mount. They have been and gone. They never stayed.’ She waves her hand dismissively through the air. ‘But Nurse Franklin….’ Sister Monica Joan trails off for a moment, as if lost deeply in thought. 

Sister Julienne approaches her old friend, and places her hand on the other woman’s arm. Tim tips the biscuit dust into the bin and turns back to the conversation. 

‘I understand how difficult this whole situation is, but there really is very little we can do.’ 

‘So we leave her to this? We leave her without help or hope? That is very disagreeable to me.’ Sister Monica Joan focuses heavily on the custard creams now, and seems to block anything else out. Even when Sister Julienne, calmly and clearly, says, ‘Sister, please look at me,’ or Tim ventures a, ‘Sister Monica Joan?’ quietly. Even when the doors to Nonnatus fly open with a dramatic thud, and the click-clack of high heels starts down the corridor. Even when Trixie herself appears at the kitchen door. 

Tim is the first to notice her, the nuns too busy watching and waiting on each other. He watches Trixie survey the situation, an interloper on her own damnation. Tim reaches out and she takes his hand in hers. 

‘My my,’ she says, her voice like cut glass, sharp and sudden and so very Trixie, ‘I only sent you for one boiler part. Whatever has taken you so long?’ 

Sister Julienne stands up and approaches Trixie. Monica Joan has turned to face her too, with eyes full of wonder, as if she thinks Trixie is a trick of the light. 

‘I thought,’ Trixie says quietly, ‘that we weren’t going to tell her.’ 

‘She was very insistent, after Mr Turner mentioned you,’ Sister Julienne says. And suddenly Trixie’s removal from Nonnatus house doesn’t seem quite so sinister. Of course Trixie would have played a part. She’s not one to go without a fight. ‘It’s best that you’re here, now, really,’ Sister Julienne adds, a moment later. ’You can try and explain it.’ 

They all look over at Sister Monica Joan, who’s bathed in the soft summer light coming from the window, a confusion clouded her eyes. Tim thinks, this is what they were trying to avoid - and it was a kindness in it, too - and he has brought it to pass. 

Trixie asks him to go and look for the boiler part. He does as instructed. He’s not sure he can take Sister Monica Joan’s plaintive look any longer. 

He goes down the corridor. At first, he’s not sure where he’s going, but he remembers that Fred has stored some things in cupboards in the clinical room. So he heads there, full of a sadness in his chest - at his own stupidity, and the thought that he was doing a kindness when he didn’t truly understand. They didn’t need to say he made a mistake, but he made one alright. 

Tim searches the cupboard. He throws himself into that. His mind is running fast, and he feels disappointed in himself. He thinks about his mother again, his real mother, and whether Sister Monica Joan remembers her. It all seems so long ago. He remembers once, when he was younger, Sister Monica Joan looking right at him and saying, ‘You have your mother’s eyes,’ and Tim had wanted to cry because nobody had ever said something like that to him before. He wonders the kind of sadness that somebody mixed up like Sister Monica Joan holds within her. 

He reaches up on his tiptoes to look into one of the high cupboards, but as he does so, he starts to hear conversation - two voices - advancing up the corridor towards him. At first he ignores them, guesses that it’s Sister Julienne and Trixie discussing intricacies of the pregnancy and such, but they’re getting closer and closer and it’s he’s starting to think it’s not. 

Tim’s holding a leather shoe and a broom handle when they enter the room. Nurse Crane and Sister Hilda, complete with medical bags after a long delivery. 

Nurse Crane, without looking up, says, ‘While I’m not sure I’m in agreement about what happened to Nurse Franklin-’

But their conversation stops dead when they see him, and for a moment he feels like a thief, caught mid burglary. They’re talking about Trixie, of course they are - it seems rather unavoidable at the moment. 

‘Helping out Mr Buckle?’ Nurse Crane says, with a chuckle. Sometimes Tim thinks Phyllis Crane knows him better than he knows himself. 

The nurses place their medical bags on the side. Tim has stopped looking for the boiler part, it seems unimportant now - though Fred’s probably back at the house rather confused as to why they haven’t yet returned. Everyone seems hesitant to speak, though they all know about Trixie and the Sisters, still talking away in the kitchen. 

Tim takes the lead. It’s not really a classic Tim move, but he’s standing half in a storage cupboard being stared down by a nun and sort of scary nurse and he’s not sure there’s any other moves to make. ‘I want to know what happened with Trixie,’ he says. ‘All of it.’ 

They leave the clinical room behind and trail into the back garden. Tim and Sister Hilda sit on the bench, while Nurse Crane stays standing with her arms folded. It’s the sort of place where you expect somebody to have an emotional crisis and furiously chain smoke to come to terms with it, but that person’s Trixie and she’s not here. Instead of a cigarette, Nurse Crane offers everyone a barley sweet, but it’s not really the time. 

‘Sister Julienne wanted her to go to the Mother House,’ Sister Hilda starts by saying. ‘We all thought it was the kindest thing to do.’ 

‘But she wouldn’t go?’ says Tim. 

‘It was to be expected,’ Nurse Crane says, and Sister Hilda Nods, ‘Trixie’s the kind of lass who goes on her own terms or not at all.’ 

‘It’s not just the baby,’ Sister Hilda says, and there’s an edge to her usual, bright self. Tim doesn’t know her terribly well, but he’s always found her at peace with herself. But she doesn’t seem at peace right now. ‘It was Mr Dockerill. She refused to tell him.’ 

‘He’s married, isn’t he?’ Tim says. Nobody has to reply for him to know he’s correct, their eyes tell enough of the story. They’re looking between each other, too, Nurse Crane and Sister Hilda, and that tells a story too. One about Trixie and Mr Dockerill and it doesn’t end with flowers and churches and happy songs. It ends like this, maybe. With silence. 

‘The question is not if we condone it - personally,’ Sister Hilda says. She is talking about the nuns; about the codes they are sworn to obey. Trixie has made a mistake, she has fallen. But the nuns in this district deal with unmarried mothers all the time, they are taught not to judge. But it's always different when it's one of your own. ‘But at the end of the day, this is a religious order, Mr Turner.’ 

‘But you are supposed to do good. You’re supposed to help people’ 

‘What has happened, it is not my choice,’ Sister Hilda says, hands up. Tim wonders who’s choice it is then? It is the Mother Superior, or Sister Julienne - is it Trixie? Is it God? 

They sit in silence for a while, the summer sun beating down on them all. Nurse Crane has her arms folded, face downturned. They seem to be at a crossroads. Tim understands Sister Hilda’s perspective, and of course he knows that nuns abide by their religious teachings strictly. But they’re talking about Trixie, and they can’t just turn away from her because of this. Can they? 

‘Did she really have to go?’ Tim says. He is trying to reconcile his views with what has happened. 

But before either the nurse or the nun can reply, the sound of running footsteps can be heard in the corridor. Nurse Crane is the first to the door, followed by Tim with Sister Hilda hot on his heels. They enter the building and try to locate the source of the panic. And then Sister Frances appears, wheeling round the corner out of breath. She stops for a second with her hands on her knees. 

‘It’s Trixie,’ she says, gulping in oxygen. ‘She’s fainted.’ 

They rush towards the kitchen as a group. But here, Tim is reminded of the last time - the glass cracked, the blood on the carpet. But this time it’s not her hand she’s hurt. Tim can see her, lying on the floor, the upturned plate of biscuits destroyed around her. This time, there’s a cut on her head and there’s so much blood Sister Julienne looks like she’s been to a Butchers. 

‘She’s unconscious,’ someone says. 

‘Trixie?’ Trixie?’ a soft voice calls. 

‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ says another. 

Tim stumbles backwards. There’s a panic rising in his chest. He needs to talk to dad - they need him, with his comforting words and his kind smile. They need a man like Doctor Turner but he’s in Bristol. Tim closes in on the phone, but he’s heads a mess. 

As he goes to pick up the receiver, the front door bell rings. Thinking that it could be the ambulance already, Tim heads over. He smooths his hair down for something to do, his hands fidgety and fiddling. He can hear the nurses behind him talking swiftly, do this, do that, and Tim feels useless. His heart is pounding in his chest so hard he’s scared it’s going to come out. 

Tim pulls the door open. At first, he’s surprised. It’s not the ambulance, not at all. Tim opens his mouth and then closes it. What on earth should he say? 

Christopher Dockerill is standing in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Kept away from Nonnatus while Trixie is in trouble, Tim starts to worry. With only Christopher Dockerill as company, a frank conversation brings understand to old issues. Tim's family finally return, but do they realise the bonds Tim has made while they've been away?


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody who's stuck with this - sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up, I've been really struggling with motivation to write recently. There's only two more chapters, so hopefully they'll be up soon. Thanks again for any comments/kudos, it really gives me a boost :)

He and Christopher go and sit on the bench in the allotment. Tim kicks his shoes against the dusty ground, hands in pockets, unsure of what to say or what to do. He just knows that Trixie doesn’t need anymore confusion right now. 

Christopher Dockerill isn’t someone who Tim knows well - they’ve met four or five times, but haven’t ever really spoken. There’s an awkward silence between them, because they both keep looking at the front door of Nonnatus House. Tim wonders if Christopher knows what’s going on inside, if he heard the panicked shouts or saw Tim’s wild eyes when he opened the door. 

‘I heard you’ve been looking after Trixie these last few weeks,’ Christopher says. The two men aren’t looking at each other, though the spectre of Trixie weighs heavy beside them. Tim isn’t sure where he stands anymore; he and Trixie have become close recently, but he knows there’s much of this situation he fails to understand. 

‘Something like that.’ 

They drift off into silence some more. Tim swings his feet, fidgeting, unable to sit still. He keeps thinking about Sister Frances, the way she looked when she said Trixie was unwell. Should he have stayed? What good would he have done, just standing there, distracting? He doesn’t know anything, not compared to the nurses, the nuns. 

And now here he is, sitting with Trixie’s ex - or perhaps not so ex - boyfriend, unsure of what to say or where to go. There’s unstable ground between him and Christopher, the ability to cross wires and get confused. Things Tim knows that Christopher does not; and surely the other way around, too. 

‘Is she happy?’ Christopher Dockerill asks. Tim looks over at him - the other man has his head down, his coat drawn across his body despite the summer sun bearing down on them. Christopher has asked after Trixie’s happiness, but he sounds far from it himself; lost to a sadness that catches at the edges of his voice. 

‘It’s not my place,’ Tim says. He’s not sure he could answer the question if he tried. Sometimes, he might say, sometimes Trixie is happy and sometimes - most times - she is decidedly not. But he cannot claim to know her mind. He barely knows his own these days. He’s been so caught up in Trixie and in avoiding everything, that the three weeks have crept up on him suddenly, and now they’re nearly over. He thinks he will be lonely when Trixie goes. Tim tells himself not to think of it. 

‘I just need to talk to her - five minutes is all,’ Christopher says. Tim’s already shaking his head, the moment Christopher starts speaking. They’re both watching each other now. Christopher takes something from his pocket and holds it in his outstretched palm. It’s a ring and it glints, so bright, in the midday sun. Tim doesn’t know what to say. It’s a plain ring, a man’s ring, Christopher’s ring. He’s not wearing it anymore. 

Tim is saved from explanation by the sound of screeching bike tyres. He looks up and sees, beyond the allotment gates, Valerie Dyer, cape askew, hands still tight on the handlebars. 

‘What’s going on?’ she says. Her eyes are on Christopher, who rises from the bench and goes over to the gate. Tim says where he is, hands against the wooden seat, head swimming. Too much has happened, too much for him to get his head around. Trixie’s hurt, she’s leaving, Christopher’s here. And it’s not his place. It’s never been his place. 

Val and Christopher are talking. Tim tries not to listen but he can’t. 

‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ Val says. 

‘I just need to see her.’ 

‘You’re not listening.’ 

‘Please, Valerie.’ 

‘There are things you don’t know about, Christopher. You can’t just waltz back in.’ 

Christopher sighs and his arms fall, defeated, to his side. He sees a shadow standing before Tim, strung out, empty. All of them, they’ve got these masks - and they’re slipping, revealing. Underneath everyone’s just stuck, same as Tim. 

Val looks past the gate at Tim. She climbs off her bike and steps forward. ‘What are you doing here, chick?’ 

And that’s the moment. The tipping point. Val’s looking at him with kind, soft eyes, and Tim’s voice is stuttering, unsteady. Behind them all, the door to Nonnatus house is thrown open and Sister Julienne stands in the doorway. Far off, the sound of sirens can be heard. 

Tim stands up. 

‘It’s Trixie,’ he says. That’s all he has to say. 

They take Trixie to the London. She’s talking, conscious, but with a pretty serious cut to the back of her head. Val goes with her. Everyone else stays behind. 

Visiting hour is at six, or so Nurse Crane says. Tim has stayed at Nonnatus all afternoon, unable to face the cycle ride back to the house. Someone’s phoned Fred, explained why that boiler part hasn’t turned up. The air is thick with concern, with people worrying but not saying anything about it. 

Tim and Phyllis Crane are in the kitchen, drinking black coffee in the quiet. It’s been quite a day. It seems a lifetime since they sat together in the garden with Sister Hilda. 

‘I could take you, if you’d like?’ she says, patting him softly on the arm. 

‘Oh, she won’t want to see me,’ he says. He shakes his head and stares into the mug. 

Nurse Crane laughs warmly. ‘Don’t be daft, lad.’ 

So that’s that. He ends up in Phyllis Crane’s car, hurtling towards the London, unsure of what he’ll say if he sees Trixie. Should he mention Christopher? He decides not, and leaves that to Valerie, who’ll certainly bring it up next time she drops in. He feels out of place all of sudden, the bubble he and Trixie created has burst and real life - good and bad - has seeped back in. 

Their conversation in the park seems so long ago - all those nights they couldn’t sleep and they sat together on the staircase, talking about shadows and ghosts. It doesn’t seem real, anymore. He reminds himself that Trixie is very different from him, that they were only forced together by his parents and things far out of control. The time is up. 

When they arrive, Tim sits beside her bed. Nurse Crane has left in search of the doctor in a bid to learn more about Trixie’s case, so it’s just the two of them. 

For a moment, neither of them say anything. The hustle and bustle of the ward is enough to distract them. He lays his hand on her blanket, unable to say anything - all the things he thinks of, how are you? what’s wrong? can I help? just sound childish. 

But Trixie takes his hand and holds it tight. She doesn’t say anything either. They look at each other, and all of the fears he had are dismissed. It’s still Trixie - the friendship they have made in the last few weeks is still there. It’s still real. 

‘I’m here,’ he says. He smiles, the way Trixie smiled at him long ago when his mother was dying. 

Trixie adjusts the pillows behind her recently stitched head, and turns to look at him. She looks tired, but she’s still smiling. ‘Tell me about this university business then,’ she says. And it’s a welcome distraction for her. And for Tim too, after everything. 

He tells her he’s worried about leaving Poplar, because it’s the only place he’s ever belonged. They’ve had a conversation like this before, in stops and starts, in nervous looks and shrugs. 

‘My mother is here, my real mother. I am afraid to leave her.’ Tim has done it once before, when they moved from the flat near the surgery to the house in the suburbs. 

‘People are hard to leave,’ Trixies says, and he thinks she is talking about herself too. ‘They have a habit of staying. They’re not in places, or things, Tim. They’re in you.’ 

Tim wonders about all the people who have left him - about all the people who have left Trixie Franklin too. But she’s right, he knows she is. When Tim leaves Poplar, even though he’s terrified, even though there’s so much worry tied to it all, his mother will still be with him. Trixie will be with him, too, wherever she ends up. 

‘Do they know why you fainted?’ he asks, suddenly. 

‘It’s stress, I’d expect,’ she says, with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Possibly anemia. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.’ 

‘Is your head ok?’ 

‘Oh I took a bash alright,’ she laughs. ‘I think the blood rather panicked everyone.’ 

‘Yes, quite.’ 

‘I’m as tough as old boots, sweetie.’ 

He smiles despite himself. Trixie is smiling too. She leans closer, and looks right at him. She says, ‘A little birdy told me you spoke to Mr Dockerill earlier,’ and then she falls back against the pillows. 

‘He wanted to see you.’ 

‘I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of all this. I’m sorry.’ 

‘Don’t worry,’ he says, nodding his head resolutely. ‘I’m tougher than I look, too.’ 

He wonders what Valerie said about Mr Dockerill. He wonders what Trixie really thinks about it. She sounds torn when she says his name, and everytime she talks about it Tim senses there’s something else she’d rather be saying. 

‘I’ve made a mess of it all, that’s it Tim.’ 

‘I’m sure it’ll fix itself.’ 

‘I like your positivity,’ she laughs. ‘Yes. It’ll be alright in the end.’ 

‘Just not yet?’ 

‘Something like that,’ Trixie says. 

Behind them, Nurse Crane and the doctor appear, pulling back the light curtain. 

‘My my, Miss Franklin,’ the doctor says, ‘somebody’s popular tonight.’ 

Nurse Crane offers to drive him back to the house. 

‘You can come and collect your bicycle tomorrow,’ she says, as they speed through the streets. They don’t talk about Trixie, and the radio plays quietly. Tim taps a rhythm against the window as the sun slips out of the sky and darkness falls. 

As they approach the house, Tim notices that things are different. At first he thinks it’s because Fred’s van has gone, but it’s not that. Tim’s got used to the empty driveway, but it’s not empty anymore. Nurse Crane pulls up on the curb outside the house. 

‘I think Sister Julienne telephoned them,’ she says, pointing at the car on the driveway. The Turner car, absent in Bristol for three weeks, sits with its lights off, returned to its rightful place. So his family is back - summoned by a worried Sister Julienne. There seems something monumental in it, a shift or a change he felt he should’ve noticed. 

It means Trixie’s time is up. 

He climbs out of the car and walks slowly down the path to the front door. He has his hands in his pockets, his jacket over one shoulder. Mum opens the door, looking fraught with worry, and Tim sees dad behind her. The sound of his siblings playing fills the air. The house is full again, which Tim thinks should dispel the ghosts that have lingered in the walls while they’ve been away. 

But there’s Trixie, and Tim still feels like she’s here - her things are in the spare bedroom, her perfume on the shelf by the basin. Is Trixie one of the ghosts now? 

Mum suffocates him with a hug. 

‘It’s so good to see you,’ she says. ‘We’ve all missed you so much.’ 

Tim thinks, so have I. He hasn’t realised how much until this moment. But he misses Trixie too. He misses Poplar and he hasn’t even left yet. 

‘Are you alright, Timothy?’ Dad asks, once Mum has let him go. Tim stands for a moment in the doorway, staring at his family. He opens his mouth and then closes it. He feels like he might cry. 

But he smiles, just like Trixie would, and says, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Tim reconnects with his family, while Trixie recovers at hospital. But once she's released, it's time for the daring duo to say goodbye.


	15. Chapter 15

Things get back to normal quickly. Overnight, it’s like the last three weeks haven’t happened. The house is alive with sound and movement and chaos - his siblings unable to keep still or quiet and the calm that Tim has found recently is shattered in an instant. 

But there’s something effortlessly comforting in it. In the way Dad sits with his piles of paperwork or mum bustles around the kitchen: his siblings laughing and playing and home. All of his worry and pain at the idea of leaving is put to the side. With his family back it is almost too busy to think of anything else; they take up so much of his energy he can barely think about university. 

And yet, despite it, Tim sits to the side, apart still - he can see the marks Trixie has left in this place and they can’t. It’s been three weeks but it feels much longer. There’s something in the way his parents look at him now, because they know about it but they’re not saying anything. It weighs heavy, unspoken. 

Teddy toddles across the rug and Tim reaches out. His younger brother takes his hand for support and comes closer. Tim watches Teddy for a moment, captivated by his little hands as they wheel through the air. 

His brother sits on the sofa beside him. Tim reaches behind, to the bookshelf, and picks one he knows his sisters will enjoy too. He opens the book on his lap and looks down at his siblings, sprawled across the carpet, who all turn to him when he starts to speak. 

‘Once upon a time,’ he says. 

Everyone’s tired, so they go to bed early. Tim doesn’t. He stays downstairs, claiming that he wants to finish reading a magazine on guitars that they brought back from Bristol. But he doesn’t read, instead he sits in the fading light and tries to write a letter. 

He can hear his family above him, creaking the floorboards, rushing into rooms that have been empty all this time. The doors slam and the sound reverberates through the walls. Tim has forgotten how it sounded - it was so quiet with Trixie for company. Easy to get lost in your own thoughts. 

Tim turns back to his letter. He’s started it about five hundred times, but he can’t ever get it right. Every time he writes something it sounds stupid or wrong. It’s for Trixie, a goodbye of sorts. They didn’t exactly have much time to adjust to this new situation back at the hospital - they’ve barely spoken since the boiler incident, and he thinks he’s already starting to miss her. 

He knew, of course, that she was going to go - that his family would come back. Tim thought something would shift inside him, a resignation to it; an understanding, perhaps. But it’s been cut off, abrupt, Trixie is here but she’s not. In and out, with and without. He doesn’t know what to say. He writes, dear Trixie, yet again as someone starts down the staircase behind him. 

Tim doesn’t turn around, but he feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up. It’s Dad. He’s in his pyjamas, and has a concerned look on his face. Dad pulls out a chair and sits next to him at the table. Above them, Mum is wrestling with the kids in order to get them into bed - they can hear her cajoling and persuading in that way only she’s good at. 

Tim and his Dad share a knowing look. 

‘Look, Timothy,’ Dad starts, after a moment, ‘I understand that this might not be easy for you.’ 

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tim says, but he can tell already that Dad’s not going to believe him that quick. 

‘But if you want to talk-’

‘I don’t.’ 

A pause. Dad sighs. ‘Who are you writing to?’ he asks, pointing down at the crumpled sheets of paper. 

‘Trixie.’ 

‘Oh.’ 

So maybe Tim’s not in the mood for talking right now, but Dad doesn’t press it. Maybe Tim’s never going to want to talk about it, because these last three weeks have been weird and different and new and it’s not going to ever happen again. Maybe it’ll just stay, this far off memory, this golden sun summer that weighs heavy in his head. 

But Dad’s okay with that. He sits with Tim as he writes the letter but doesn’t ask anything. Tim’s still not sure what to say but he starts with this. He writes, neat and ordered, Trixie, Thank you, and goes from there. 

She’s discharged three days later. A brief conversation with Sister Julienne reveals that Trixie lost a lot of blood, and lacked energy, but that both she and the baby are doing fine now. 

She comes by the house. It’s to collect her things. He knew this moment would come, but there’s something that wells in his chest when he sees her climbing up the stairs to the spare room. It’s just the two of them - the kids are with Mum at the clinic and Dad’s out on rounds. He thinks Trixie picked this moment on purpose. 

At first, they don’t talk. Trixie just goes up to her room to pack. Tim waits on the staircase, listening to the quiet. The sun streams through the upstairs windows, bathing him in the glow. It’s hot - almost unbearably so. Tim leans back so he’s resting on the wall. 

Eventually, with her things packed away, Trixie comes and sits next to him on the stairs. The sun is blinding as he looks over at her. There’s a cut on the back of her head that’s been stitched, just like the cut to her hand, violent and red. She winces and she sits down. 

‘Are you alright?’ he asks. 

‘I will be.’ 

‘And for now?’ 

‘I’ll get through,’ she says. Her voice is light, bouncing, and the worry that has belonged to them both recently is still there, only more hidden, pushed down. They are trying to forget, to forge on through and pretend, with smiles and laughter, that there’s nothing wrong at all. 

‘Are you going, now?’ he asks. He’s got his arms folded. He remembers all the nights they sat side by side like this - when they couldn’t sleep and it was easier to talk in the dark. And now it’s light, so bright he can barely see her. 

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’ 

‘Oh, here and there. I’m going to stay with Patsy and Delia for a little bit.’ 

‘Until the baby comes?’ 

Trixie nods but doesn’t say anything. Tim thinks back to their trip to Oxford, when he felt like he was in the right place even though he shouldn’t have. But Trixie had that way with it, with making you feel at ease. She’s doing it now, without even meaning to. 

She’s looking at him with soft eyes, and he wants to reach out and tell her that it’s all going to be okay but he can’t - he just can’t. He has no idea what’ll happen to her, and despite her promises, he doesn’t even know if she’ll come back. 

‘Did Christopher find you?’ he asks. His voice is quiet and for a moment he thinks Trixie hasn’t even heard him. It’s overstepping, he knows it. It’s not his place to ask, but he’s been thinking about it since he left the hospital. 

‘Yes, sweetie,’ she says. There’s something sad in the way she speaks - a resignation, a deep pain that Tim can’t even start to understand. So she talked to Christopher and she’s still leaving. There’s no last minute romantic reunion, no savior swooping into save the day. This is just it, this is the reality of all of this mess. ‘When do you go?’ she asks, switching the conversation on to him and university. 

He shrugs. ‘Not yet. September. Months away.’ His voice is hesitant and he’s very aware that they’re talking about this to avoid having to say goodbye. 

‘You’ll have an amazing time,’ she says, smiling. ‘You will. It’ll be scary but you’ll make it through.’ She puts a hand on his arm. ‘You’re strong, Tim.’ 

A beat passes. Tim looks at her. He rests his head on her shoulder. ‘You’re strong too,’ he says. ‘Oh Trixie, you’re the strongest person I know.’ 

They drink tea downstairs. They haven’t said the word, ‘goodbye’, yet, but Trixie’s bag is by the door and the afternoon is slipping away from them. It’s only been three weeks, not years and years, it shouldn’t be this hard. 

‘Now,’ she says, legs crossed, sitting at the table. ‘I expect letters. I want to know how you’re doing.’

He nods. He reaches across the table and picks up the letter he wrote the day she was admitted to hospital. Tim’s reluctant to give it to her, but he knows he has to. Inside are all the things he wants to say out loud, but can’t find the way to make himself. He places it in front of Trixie. 

‘For you,’ he says. ‘But please don’t read it yet.’ 

She nods her head slowly. ‘On the train, then,’ she says resolutely. Quickly, she scrawls an address down on a scrap of paper and hands it to him. It’s the address of the house in Oxford, her place of safety. Without saying, she’s asking him to write to her when she’s away. He knows he will, certainly for the summer at least. He’ll tell her all about how the nurses at Nonnatus are getting on - how his brothers and sisters are growing up. He’ll tell her that Dad’s working himself too hard again because of course he will. 

But that’s to come. It's the start of summer, there’s still so long left. He watches Trixie put the letter in her handbag. 

Then they hear the sound of a car on the driveway and they know the moment has come. It’s Dad back, ready to take Trixie to the station. 

‘Goodbye,’ he says, and he steps towards Trixie. She reaches out and pulls him in for a hug. He can smell her perfume, strong and powerful. He won’t forget Trixie Franklin in a hurry, not after this summer.

‘Goodbye Tim,’ she says, as she steps away. He watches her walk towards the front door and pick up her bag. 

From the window, Tim sees her climb into the car. And after that, nothing. 

He turns back to the house and starts to tidy up the Vogue magazines that have been left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a bunch to anyone still reading! 
> 
> Next Time: A few days before Tim heads to university, he receives a letter from Trixie.


End file.
